My Cruzer still works, but it thinks it’s 8GB now instead of 16GB. I used dd in Linux to clone an 8GB drive from another manufacturer. The Cruzer boots and works just fine, but I want it to be 16GB again. How should I proceed?
I do have the original SanDisk utilities that were on the drive when I bought it, but I’m not sure if they would be helpful or how to make them so.
hmmmm Clone a 16GB drive??
I’d love to, but I don’t have another one. I got the drive from my sister. She’s in California, and I’m in Germany.
But what I think would work would be to have an image of the MBR from a standard one. If I had the binary file I could use dd to overwrite mine with it. It was dumb of me not to save mine before I started.
Alternatively, if I knew the standard geometry I could use deep utilities to change the drive’s reported geometry. E.g., it says now that sectors are 512 kb. If they are 1024 kb on the unaltered thumbdrive, I cculd change that back.
I don’t think the problem is MBR related, rather Partition Table related. There may actually be a free 8GB on the drive however Windows doesn’t see anything but the first partition on removable drives. So the extra 8GB is probably there, just not accessible. There are tweaks you can do to have the Removable Medit Bit removed.
If you would rather repartition the drive to fix your problem under Windows you could use an app named DiskPartitioner or PartitionMaster. Or a Live Parted Magic distro. Just be sure, doubly sure, that the drive you are changing is the USB drive and not the system’s hard drive.
hth
-edit-
BTW You mentioned that the Cruzer boots fine. This thread might interest you:
@ed_p wrote:
I don’t think the problem is MBR related, rather Partition Table related. There may actually be a free 8GB on the drive however Windows doesn’t see anything but the first partition on removable drives. So the extra 8GB is probably there, just not accessible. There are tweaks you can do to have the Removable Medit Bit removed.
If you would rather repartition the drive to fix your problem under Windows you could use an app named DiskPartitioner or PartitionMaster. Or a Live Parted Magic distro. Just be sure, doubly sure, that the drive you are changing is the USB drive and not the system’s hard drive.
hth
-edit-
BTW You mentioned that the Cruzer boots fine. This thread might interest you:
Thanks for the good feedback! On further mulling I agree it’s not the MBR. But I have a free, multi-platform utility called TestDisk that can change the drive geometry in the partition table. I’d try it if I knew what to put in there.
I have, no exaggeration, at least a dozen ways to partition drives here and have tried most of them at one time or another. I’ve been partitioning drives for nearly twenty years! But I don’t have all that much experience with pen drives, and have only had a few. I find your note about a hidden media bit interesting. I found some intriguing pages after I Googled on that. But so far, I still don’t have a solution for my problem. I did find a utility that can tell me deeper info about my Cruzer, though. Let me know if I should post that. The utility: USBDeview.
In any case, I’m not at all sure reformatting will fix it. Are those utilities you mentioned special in a way that most other partitioning utilities don’t provide? I can’t see more space on the Cruzer now when I look at it with partitioning software – except about 137MB more unallocated at the (current) end.
As to your P.S. about multibooting, yes! But it’s much easier nowadays than those 2006 instructions. I recommend a site called http://www.pendrivelinux.com/. I used the YUMI Multiboot USB Creator (for Windows) from there, and it works a treat. There are scads of other utilities there, and at least four or five for multiboot setups, including for under Linux.
Cheers,
Dallman
Looking to find more about the partitioners you mentioned, I landed on this page. Seems like a very useful collection:
"But I have a free, multi-platform utility called TestDisk"
Yes I do also, and while it can be very powerful it’s not for amateurs. At this point rather than throwing changes at it lets determine what we can as it stands. Does TestDisk display how many partitions you have? And amount of unallocated space?
“But I don’t have all that much experience with pen drives,”
They are structured pretty much the same as harddrives, if they weren’t Windows couldn’t read them.
" I’m not at all sure reformatting will fix it."
I agree. Formating will only effect the space that Windows can see. You need something that shows the status/availability of the hidden 8GB.
“I can’t see more space on the Cruzer now when I look at it with partitioning software”
Now that’s the problem. Even with a Live Linux app?
" I recommend a site called http://www.pendrivelinux.com/. I used the YUMI Multiboot USB Creator (for Windows) from there, and it works a treat."
I’ve been to pendrivelinux, it’s a good site and YUMI is a good app. I usually use PEtoUSB or RMPrepUSB to make my USB drives bootable and Grub4DOS to select boot options. Anyways, you need something that displays the real capacity of the USB device then something that will use that info to reset the device.
YUMI might do it. RMPrepUSB might do it. TestDisk might even do it. Or you might end up with a dead USB device. If there’s anything you want on it now’s the time to back it up.
And I think I’ve seen the Survey of Freeware Utilities site before also.
@ed_p wrote:
Does TestDisk display how many partitions you have? And amount of unallocated space?
Yes: one partition and something like 137MB only of unallocated space at the end.
Ed_P wrote (quoting me via italics):
“But I don’t have all that much experience with pen drives,”
They are structured pretty much the same as harddrives, if they weren’t Windows couldn’t read them.
Well, they don’t have physical platters that spin. It must all be via translation tables from non-volatile memory or something. Sorry if my nomenclature isn’t exact. I call myself a Crossover Fuzzy, as I studied in the liberal arts. 
Ed_P wrote (quoting me via italics):
" I’m not at all sure reformatting will fix it."
I agree. Formating will only effect the space that Windows can see. You need something that shows the status/availability of the hidden 8GB.
“I can’t see more space on the Cruzer now when I look at it with partitioning software”
Now that’s the problem. Even with a Live Linux app?
Even with a Live Linux app. By the way, last year I submitted a bug to the GParted team that eventually got resolved. If one cloned a partition and kept the original UUID, GParted would get confused about which partition was mounted.
Ed_P wrote (quoting me via italics):
I’ve been to pendrivelinux, it’s a good site and YUMI is a good app. I usually use PEtoUSB or RMPrepUSB to make my USB drives bootable and Grub4DOS to select boot options. Anyways, you need something that displays the real capacity of the USB device then something that will use that info to reset the device.
YUMI might do it. RMPrepUSB might do it. TestDisk might even do it. Or you might end up with a dead USB device. If there’s anything you want on it now’s the time to back it up.
Thanks. I fooled around for an hour with TestDisk and temporarily changed the cylinder count (doubled it) and temporarily had 16GB, but when I wrote the changed and recycled the drive (removed and replaced it in the slot), GParted showed only a missing allocation table. So I went back into TestDisk and put back the partition table I had when I started the operation. The drive is again as it was when I started this thread. I see no way to get it back to 16GB for real, though I’m sure there must be one.
I rand USBDeview, which I had mentioned previously in this thread. Here is the result for what I think was the Cruzer before I changed it and from the no-name USB drive I cloned with dd as per the thread subject.
And here is a screen shot from GParted of the Cruzer currently.
/dr
" I see no way to get it back to 16GB for real, though I’m sure there must be one."
I agree. Try RMPrepUSB. If it doesn’t resolve the problem you may to resort to manually changing items with TestDisk which of course is risky. Or Tiny Hexer, which is riskier still.
I have a 16 GB SanDisk Cruzer, let me see if I can find something useful for you.
@ed_p wrote:
Try RMPrepUSB. If it doesn’t resolve the problem you may to resort to manually changing items with TestDisk which of course is risky. Or Tiny Hexer, which is riskier still.
I have a 16 GB SanDisk Cruzer, let me see if I can find something useful for you.
RMPrepUSB is quite a nifty thing. It didn’t fix the problem, but it was sure interesting to play with. I tried most all the relevant options. At the end, the drive is trivially smaller than before.
Anyway, I have the USBInfo.Txt file. In pertinent part:
Disk Signature bytes (1B8h-1BBh) = 12 98 08 00 Partition 1 SIZE=7506.905MiB Type: 0B FAT32 (2047GB max) \*ACTIVE\* START POS = CYL:0 HD:1 SEC:1 END POS = CYL:956 HD:254 SEC:63 START (LBA) = 63 (0000003F) SIZE (LBA) = 15,374,142 (00EA973E)
This geometry is now different from what I had before I went all destructo. I had 255/63/973 heads/sectors-per-track/cylinders, with 1563408 sectors, earlier in GParted. So I have fewer cylinders (and therefore total sectors) now.
I’d be mightily interested in what your Cruzer says. I did read in the RMPrepUSB dialogs that the max possible cylinder setting is not at all as high as what I tried in TestDisk before. But I’m more interested in knowing what the sector size on yours is. If it’s 1024 instead of 512, that would be an easy answer.
The drive has the hidden second partition that causes the extra 126 MiB at the end versus the drive I cloned. That might or might not account for the “missing” cylinders. I did the testing a couple of times, once with the tickbox checked for that extra hardware bit, and I can’t remember which test this was I’m reporting the results of.
/dr
" I’d be mightily interested in what your Cruzer says."
I’ve got several screen shots zipped up showing what my Cruzer shows I just need a place to upload them so you can download them. The place I use to use has apparently gone away.
I gave you some sftp space! Private message sent.
Also, hereis an RMPrepUSB screenshot from when I tried the extra hardware bit. This is just FYI.
Hi, I exactly having the same issue recently. wondering how I can get my 16GB back while it has be dd to 198MB. Thanks!
Same here. So I naively tried
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=4M
(where sdc is the device) so that it would fill up the drive with zeroes. I got the following error at only 3.1GB:
dd: error writing ‘/dev/sdc’: No space left on device 729+0 records in 728+0 records out 3056025600 bytes (3.1 GB) copied, 1.13152 s, 2.7 GB/s
I used gparted to update my partition table and no luck.
I have a sandisk cruzer 16GB. Please help if you know anything.
(And please no references to windows because I do not have access to this)
edit: it worked after I restarted my system. Not sure what went wrong here.
Wow, a simple restart did the trick? I wish it would apply to my case too. So far, I am at a lost on what to do next here. I’m about to give up and consider this as bricked.
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