Formatting a USB stick

singh016 · 06-28-2014, 06:32 AM

I had a 16 GB USB pen drive. For some purpose I had to format it again and again. When I checked the capacity of the stick today, I found out that the used memory is NULL but the free memory was gone down to 986 MB.

What really could have happened?
And how can I get back 15 GB space of my pen drive?

sycamorex · 06-28-2014, 06:34 AM

How did you format it and what filesystem you keep formatting it into?

singh016 · 06-28-2014, 07:42 AM

I used this command in linux :

sudo mkfs.vfat -I /dev/sdc1

sycamorex · 06-28-2014, 08:36 AM

Ok, you're using FAT for that. If you are using a Windows file system, have you tried to format it from Windows?

Have you removed all other partitions from it? what does 'fdisk -l /dev/sdc say?

schneidz · 06-28-2014, 08:41 AM

i have good results using gparted to delete/create ext2 partitions.

michaelk · 06-28-2014, 11:16 AM

Inferring from your other post that if you you copied an image via the dd command to the drive and if that image was only 996MB then your drive will appear to be the same size.

The easiest fix would be to delete and recreate the partition table.

John VV · 06-28-2014, 01:08 PM

mark or buy colored usb drives and label them a FAT
using your ( or your GF's/wife's) nail polish WORKS
for working with windows

for the rest format them to ext4
and keep them that format