Flash Drive- cannot read its exact size

Asked By francisb55 0 points N/A Posted on - 06/15/2012

I purchased what was supposed to be a 256 GB flash drive but have never had it to read more than 4 GB. I was told that I needed to use exFat to make the flash drive see the full 256 GB.

I am using Win7 and Mac OS X. I did a disk management check in Win7 and it reads (3.91 GB Fat32 Healthy Partition) & 250.00 GB unallocated. How can I get the flash drive to read the full 256 GB if it really is that size or is the flash drive just toast? I am at a total loss here Help!!

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Answered By Kiawna Milton 0 points N/A #160292

Flash Drive- cannot read its exact size

Under the Computer Management, right-click on which drive you wish to use and then click the Extend Volume option. It should be unallocated space.

Click the Next button and the partitions will be combined and will become your default drive.

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• Posted on - 06/15/2012
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Answered By qadribrothers 15 points N/A #160293

Flash Drive- cannot read its exact size

I've had this issue before. I'm not sure what causes it, but I do have a fix. Here is what you do; be cautious, this will structure your memory stick or whatever generate you get into in phase 3, so continue at your own caution:

1. Run command prompt as admin.
2. Diskpart.
3. Select disk 1 (or whatever number that corresponds to your flash drive, unless you have other external drives or more than one hard-drive in your computer, this is almost always disk 1; to view all your disks use list disk).
4. Clean.
5. Create partition primary.
6. Select partition 1.
7. Active.
8. Format fs=fat32.
9. Assign.
10. Exit.

 

This is what usually performs for me, but as I described before, be cautious, I take no liability for missing information.

 

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• Posted on - 06/15/2012
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Answered By Sharath Reddy 590495 points N/A #323731

Flash Drive- cannot read its exact size

If that is a new flash drive, it needs to be formatted before you actually use it. To format, plug the USB flash drive on the USB port then start Windows Explorer. Next, locate your USB flash drive, right-click it, and select “Format” then format the drive.

When formatting the drive, set the file system to “NTFS” or “exFAT” if the drive is bigger than 4 GB and you want to use the entire space. Setting or leaving the file system to “FAT” or “FAT32” will default to a 4 GB volume size. This is probably why you always end up with a 4 GB partition.

If this doesn’t work and the formatted volume size always defaults to 4 GB, you can always adjust the partition size using a partitioning software. Download EaseUS Partition Master Home and install it. Once installed, plug the USB flash drive then start Partition Master. Next, select your flash drive then right-click it and select “Resize/Move partition”.

Set the unallocated space before and after to zero (0) then click “OK”. Click to apply the change then restart the computer when you are prompted.

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• Posted on - 08/06/2019
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