Flash card format
I have a 4GB Micro SDHC flash card that through my own mistake now thinks it is only 3.69GB in size. Is there anyway of returning its capacity to 4GB. There is no data on it at the moment. I have Acronis TI 2009.
Any suggestions would be appreciated
Yes, before I did a TI2009 restore to it, it had 7950720 sectors formatted capacity of 3.795GB, the same as another identical card I have. Now it only has 7725056 sectors. It is a Sandisk 4GB MicroSD HC card.
Same file system on both cards? (Both FAT32 or both NTFS, etc.)
What was the mistake that you referred to in your first post?
If Vista or Windows 7 is being used, I wonder if "cleaning" the card with DISKPART would make a difference.
KOLO,
Same file system on both cards (FAT32).
Mistake was to restore a partition image from another card, same brand and type, both 4GB.
MudCrab
All my PC's are 32 bit XP systems, I don't have a Vista or Win 7 PC to try.
I may just have to write this off to experience.
Does XP Disk Management console show any unallocated space on this flash card?
No Mark it doesn't.
Interestingly I have today looked at a number of 4GB Micro SDHC cards. A couple of generic brand cards (including one brand new one) also show as 3.69 GB, but two Sandisk 4GB Cards I have show as 3.795 GB. The botched Sandisk card also originally showed as 3.795 GB before I used Acronis to restore an image from one of the other Sandisk cards to it.
I've tried replacing the MBR on the botched card with one from one of the good cards, even tried a full restore again from a full sector/sector Acronis backup of a good card - it makes no difference, seems whatever code identifies its capacity has changed.
olddog:
It's probably the way that the card's geometry is detected by the PC. The two different sized cards will probably have differing numbers of cylinders, heads, and sectors per track if you were to examine them with a disk editor. Windows may identify one as a removable disk and the other as a fixed disk.
If you are a Linux user you could always take one of the larger cards and do a dd copy to the smaller one:
dd if=/dev/sdx of=/dev/sdy bs=512
where x and y are the device names for the cards.
If I get a chance later today I'll look up XP diskpart commands to see if there is a way to clean off and repartition one of the cards like you can do with Vista and Windows 7, but work beckons now...
Try the SD Formatter from Panasonic, works every time when i mess up a flash drive or memory card, click on the link and scroll to the bottom of the page.
panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/sd/download/sd_formatter.html
Hopr this helps.
d.chatten
Thanks for the link. I have tried it but it simply formats the card to 3.69GB. I guess it is formatting whatever partition is already in place.
Kolo,
No I'm not a linux user.
From what I can see, the sectors/track and the number of heads is the same, but the number of cylinders is now less, resulting in a reduction in the total number of sectors.
Despite some misleading links on Google searches, I have not been able to find any Partition management software that can actually handle micro SDHC cards. I suppose they do have a partition structure?
Try to use SD Formatter again but go in to the options and set the FORMAT TYPE to Full (Erase Off) and set the FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT to ON, if that doesn't work try setting the FORMAT TYPE to Full (Erase ON) and the FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT to ON.
BTW, SD Formatter removes all partitions and restores flash drives/memory cards to there defaults, exactly as it was when it left the factory, this will also depend on the options you use when formatting.
Hope this helps!
d.chatten,
I've tried all the combinations you suggested without any success. Interestingly when it does the erase, it says it is erasing 8167424, which I take to be sectors and should be enough to provide the 3.79 GB formatted that the card was originally. It erases them all but then formats only 3.69GB
I've also tried restoring from an acronis image made from an identical sandisk card (3.79GB) which was made as as sector by sector image and including unallocated space. When restoring to this card if I tick sector by sector restore, it greys out the card presumably because it thinks there isn't enough space.