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Wednesday, 20 May 2015 00:00

Formatting large capacity flash drives

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b2ap3_thumbnail_iStock_000003135817XSmall.jpgNowadays the most compact data carrier is undoubtedly a memory card (SD/MMC/MS and so forth) and USB flash drive. They have emerged relatively recently but have already made a huge breakthrough in development. Just a few years ago the capacity of such device was only 4 to 8 Mb, and today such devices can replace a small hard drive and its capacity reaches several Gigabytes. Though the problems you can face when working with such drives and cards are akin to the ones of HDD. For example, the majority of users have certainly faced the barriers when creating large capacity logical disks (everyone knows about the situation when FAT16 doesn’t allow creating a partition over 2 Gb. We face the same problem when working with flash drives.

Quite often you can observe the situation when trying to format a 2 Gb flash drive, and it is being persistently detected as a device with the capacity of 988 Mb or even less. Frequently plug-in memory cards users face this problem due to the fact that a large number of pocket computers, cameras and smart phones cannot read cards over 2 Gb. They simply do not see the larger capacity and force format them to a smaller size.

In some cases it is helpful to update the software of the device although update is not always available for all devices. Otherwise you simply have to give up the idea of having a card with capacity of over 2Gb. It is not advisable to format cards to a smaller size than it actually is, even if this is on what your device insists. Otherwise you will be able to return the original capacity of the device only by mounting it in a modern device able to determine the real size.

There is also a number of special tools enabling formatting of a faulty card and bringing it back to its original condition, although such tools can be found only in service centers.

Last modified on Wednesday, 20 May 2015 13:58
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Viktor S., Ph.D. (Electrical/Computer Engineering), was hired by DataRecoup, the international data recovery corporation, in 2012. Promoted to Engineering Senior Manager in 2010 and then to his current position, as C.I.O. of DataRecoup, in 2014. Responsible for the management of critical, high-priority RAID data recovery cases and the application of his expert, comprehensive knowledge in database data retrieval. He is also responsible for planning and implementing SEO/SEM and other internet-based marketing strategies. Currently, Viktor S., Ph.D., is focusing on the further development and expansion of DataRecoup’s major internet marketing campaign for their already successful proprietary software application “Data Recovery for Windows” (an application which he developed).