The size of the SD card has decreased. The flash drive has become smaller: simple recommendations for memory recovery

Many people who work with flash memory cards (flash drives), such as photographers, sometimes encounter a problem - the flash drive has decreased in volume. Yes, yes, yes, no matter how incredible it may sound, it is true. I encountered this too :)

This is what the properties window for a 16 GB flash drive looked like. Only 8 GB available!

The solution to this problem turned out to be very simple! Anyone can restore the full capacity of their flash drive in just a minute. Read on.

First, let's open the disk manager.

Open Control Panel (Start Control Panel).
Open Administration.
- If you have Windows 7 or 8, enter in the search bar (top right) " administration"Then the corresponding item will appear in the control panel.
- If you have Windows Vista, switch the Control Panel to "Classic View" in the menu on the left, if you haven't already done so.
Open Computer Management.
Click on the item in the tree on the left “Disk Management”.

So, we see that the flash drive (in my case it is EOS_DIGITAL J:) is divided in a very strange way. Half is occupied by the active partition, and half of the flash drive is simply not partitioned. We click on the active partition and see a sad picture - we can neither delete this partition nor expand it to the entire volume of the flash drive.

We click on the unmarked area with the right mouse button and see an even sadder picture - we cannot do anything with the unmarked area.

OK, it's time to repair the flash drive. Open the Start menu and enter “ cmd" Then right-click on the item “ cmd.exe" and then - "Run as administrator." If you are the owner of Windows XP, then you can click Win+R(or Start Run...) and enter cmd.exe there and click Enter.

In the black window that opens, enter diskpart and press Enter. A disk utility will open, which can do more than the standard Windows interface.

Then enter LIST disk and make money Enter. You will see a list of drives connected to your computer. Now the most important point, you need to understand which disk is your bad flash drive. The best guide is volume. To make your task easier, remove all other removable media from your computer - memory cards in a card reader, USB flash drives, external hard drives, etc. So this list will be much smaller.

So, we look at the list and remember that my flash drive is 16 GB (as it says on the box). Disk 0, 1 are not suitable, they are 698 GB each, which is clearly more, these are two of my hard drives. Disk 2 is not suitable, it is only 1886 MB, which is less than 2 GB, it is a flash drive in the built-in card reader. We skip disks 3 and 4 - they are not connected, leaving disk 5 - 15 GB - this is our flash drive. You may ask: “why? After all, our flash drive is 16 GB, and here it’s 15!” This happens due to the fact that manufacturers actually indicate a larger volume on the packaging than what actually is. The computer believes that 1 GB is 1024 MB, and flash drive manufacturers believe that 1 GB is 1000 MB. This is a long-known fact.

So, you have determined your disk number. In my case, this number is 5. Enter SELECT disk=5 and press Enter.

The program reports that disk 5 is selected. The next step is to delete all partitions from the disk and therefore all data on the disk will be lost. If there is something on your flash drive that you want to save, then now is the time to do it.

Enter CLEAN and press Enter.

The program reports that disk cleanup was successful. Go back to the standard Windows Disk Manager and click the “Update” button. We see that our flash drive is now unallocated. Right-click on the unallocated space and select “Create simple volume...”.

We set the necessary parameters. If it is a flash drive for a camera, video camera, etc. then it is most likely better to choose the FAT32 file system. Cluster size is default. It is better to keep the volume label as it was before formatting. I have a Canon camera, volume label EOS_DIGITAL. Although, in principle, you can write anything there :) Check the “quick formatting” box and click “Next”.

After formatting was completed, the properties of the flash drive became as they should be.

That's all. Good luck!

P.S. Why has the flash drive decreased in volume? Because if in my Canon EOS 5D camera I format the flash drive through the menu, the camera formats it in this strange way. Despite the fact that the camera works great with flash drives up to 32 GB. The main thing is not to format them with the camera.

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Many people who work with flash memory cards (flash drives), such as photographers, sometimes encounter a problem - the flash drive has decreased in volume. Moreover, this can happen unexpectedly - imagine the situation - you insert a USB drive and instead of the expected 4Gb of memory you see that you have only 56 Mb on the flash drive.

As strange as it was, this problem can be solved using standard Windows tools. It is worth immediately taking into account that situations are different. This method is not 100% accurate. But he can really help. Let's take this situation as an example. A 16 GB flash drive has lost 50% of its memory. After which only 8 GB became available on it!

As mentioned earlier, there is a solution and it’s quite simple. Almost anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation will be able to restore the full capacity of their flash drive in just a minute.
So, let's begin. First, let's open the disk manager. For this:

Open Control Panel (Start\Control Panel).
Open Administration.
- If you have Windows 7, 8, 10, then enter the phrase “administration” in the search bar (top right), and the corresponding item will appear in the control panel.
- If you have Windows Vista, switch the Control Panel to "Classic View" in the menu on the left if you haven't already done so.
Open Computer Management. (also, steps 1 to 3 can be completed even faster - to do this, you just need to right-click on the “My Computer” shortcut on the desktop and select the “Manage” menu item).
Click on “Disk Management” in the tree on the left.

So, we see that the flash drive (in our case it is EOS_DIGITAL J:) is divided in a very strange way. Half is occupied by the active partition, and half of the flash drive is simply not partitioned. We click on the active partition and see a sad picture - we can neither delete this partition nor expand it to the entire volume of the flash drive.

We click on the unmarked area with the right mouse button and see an even sadder picture - we cannot do anything with the unmarked area. (to put it simply, if you imagine a flash drive as a bottle with two compartments, then in this case there is water in one compartment, and the second is completely closed from filling with water).

Okay, it's time to repair the flash drive. Open the Start menu and enter “cmd” in the search bar. Then right-click on “cmd.exe” and then “Run as administrator”. You can also press the key combination Win+R (or Start \ Run...) and enter there cmd and press Enter. This will open the command line - a console with which you can perform many operations and run any system programs with additional options.

In the black window that opens, enter diskpart and press Enter. This will open a disk utility that does more than the standard Windows interface.

Then enter LIST disk and press Enter. You will see a list of drives connected to your computer. Now the most important point, you need to understand which disk is your bad flash drive. The best guide is volume. To make your task easier, remove all other removable media from your computer - memory cards in a card reader, USB flash drives, external hard drives, etc. So this list will be much smaller.

So, we look at the list and remember that our flash drive is 16 GB (as it is written on the box). Disk 0, 1 are not suitable, they are 698 GB each, which is clearly more, these are two hard drives. Disk 2 is not suitable, it is only 1886 MB, which is less than 2 GB, this is, for example, a flash drive in the built-in card reader. We skip disks 3 and 4 - they are not connected, leaving disk 5 - 15 GB - this is our flash drive. You may ask: “Why? After all, our flash drive is 16 GB, and here it’s 15!” This happens due to the fact that manufacturers actually indicate a larger volume on the packaging than what actually is. The computer believes that 1 GB is 1024 MB, and flash drive manufacturers, when indicating its volume, mean that 1 GB is 1000 MB. This is a known fact.

So, you have determined your disk number. In our example, this number is 5. Enter SELECT disk=5 and press Enter.

Thus, we inform the program that disk 5 is selected. The next step is to delete all partitions from the disk and, therefore, all data on the disk will be lost. If there is something on your flash drive that you want to save, then it’s time to copy the files you need from the flash drive to your computer’s hard drive. Remember: even if you forgot to copy data from the flash drive before wiping it, there is always a chance to recover the lost data. How to do it? For example, using the R-studio utility. But more on that in another article.

To clean the flash drive, enter CLEAN and press Enter.

The program reports that disk cleanup was successful. Go back to the standard Windows Disk Manager and click the “Update” button. We see that our flash drive is now unpartitioned (using the example of a flash drive, like a bottle - now two compartments are combined into one, and there is no water in them). Right-click on the unallocated space and select “Create simple volume...”.

We set the necessary parameters. If it is a flash drive for a camera, video camera, TV, etc. then it is most likely better to choose the FAT32 file system. Cluster size is default. It is better to keep the volume label as it was before formatting. In the example there was a Canon camera, so the volume label is EOS_DIGITAL. Although, in principle, you can write whatever you want there :) Check the “quick formatting” box to make the process go faster, and click “Next”.

After formatting was completed, the properties of the flash drive became as they should be.

Finally, on my twentieth order from Aliexpress, I received a product that I am not happy with! After all, this is a great reason to try to start a dispute and return the money for the goods. Plus, you can improve your skill in another area of knowledge: restoring the actual size of a flash drive.

So, a couple of months ago I ordered a flash drive Sunstri 32 gigabytes. Paid $7.31 for this. In principle, I won’t say that this is a super low or some incredible price. Simple 32 gigabyte flash drives cost just 7-10 dollars, depending on the company. The other day a flash drive arrived in the mail.

I come home and plug it into the computer. What I see? Its size is 33.33 gigabytes...

Any person who rummages through computers will understand that there is a flash drive with a fake size. Yes, this data was enough for me to understand such an obvious fact! A 16 GB flash drive should show as 14.8 GB, a 32 GB flash drive should show approximately 29.5 GB...

All that's left to do is check the flash drive and find out its real size. Before all actions, be sure to format the flash drive in NTFS, or in ExFAT (an advanced version of NTFS).

How to check a flash drive on Windows?

On Windows everything is simple. You need to download the H2testw utility and run a full scan. In the diagram below I explained how to use the program.

Next comes the check: at the beginning of reading, then writing... For me, the described flash drive was checked for 1 hour 36 minutes. The essence of the check is that the program writes files approximately 1 gigabyte in size to the flash drive. And then tries to read these files...

At the end of the check, the program reported that the flash drive controller had been reprogrammed to a different size. It is this picture that should be attached to the dispute on Ali first of all.

Let's look at the results.

The line “The Media is likely to be defective” means that your flash drive is actually a different size.
14.8 GByte - OK. This means that this is the actual size of the flash drive. In this case, this is direct evidence that the 16 GB flash drive was flashed to 32 by the Chinese from Sunstri in the hope that the user is a fool and won't notice. Also Necessarily write down the number of sectors - this figure will come in handy. In my example it is 31160896!
15.9 GByte DATA LOST means that this is exactly how much they tried to fool you...

How to check a flash drive on Mac OS?

There are three ways:

The first is to use Parallels and the installed Windows image to check as described above.
The second is to use the Wine emulator and run H2Testw under Mac OS.
The third way is to use the H2Testw alternative...

The first two require dancing with a tambourine, but they are, in my opinion, the best. But if you don’t have Parallels and don’t enjoy fiddling with installing Wine, then you can figure it out with the third method.

Yes, there is one alternative... This is the F3X program, which can be downloaded from the link. Then you need to unpack the archive. In the Releases folder, find the F3X_latest.Zip archive and unpack the file. F3X is a compiled program file - run it.

The program tested this flash drive 1.5 times longer than H2Testw on Windows.

At the end of the test, the program indicated that the flash drive was either not genuine or dead...

How to restore the size of a flash drive?

To do this, use the MyDiskFix utility (Windows only). The program comes from China, so you will have little letters instead of letters. Refer to my picture below:

If an error window appears, just click YES/OK/Yes. The program will do its job and assign its actual size to the flash drive controller. After this, format the flash drive using the operating system to the desired file system.

Instead of output

I was even somewhat glad that they slipped me a 16 gigabyte flash drive (but they could have had 8 or 4)... Plus, I’m going to return the money from the store for the deception (minus 1 for the store’s karma) and the time spent. I'll definitely keep you posted on what comes of it. I’m not sure that they do this with all products - otherwise they would be “eaten” and the rating would be below par, but it doesn’t have to be every time...

Sometimes a flash drive, after formatting or incorrect ejection, begins to incorrectly display the memory size - for example, instead of 16 GB, only 8 GB or even less is available. There is another situation in which the declared size is initially much larger than the actual volume. Let's look at both cases to figure out how to restore the correct storage capacity.

Step-by-step instructions for volume restoration

To restore the actual size of the flash drive, you need to perform a low-level format. As a result, all data will be deleted from the flash drive, so first transfer the information to another medium.

You have received a completely clean media, now you need to re-label it. This procedure is performed through the task manager:

After formatting is complete, the storage capacity will be the same as it was before. If you have a flash drive from Transcend, then you can restore its actual size using the free Transcend Autoformat utility. This program independently determines the volume of the flash drive and returns its correct display.

Transcend's utility will perform low-level formatting, after which the actual available memory will be displayed in the properties of the flash drive.

Working with Chinese flash drives

Chinese flash drives, purchased on Aliexpress and other similar online platforms for little money, often have one hidden drawback - their actual capacity is significantly lower than the declared volume. The flash drive says 16 GB, but you can read no more than 8 GB from it - the rest of the information is not actually written anywhere.

This effect is achieved by flashing the controller. If the recorded files do not exceed the actual available capacity of the flash drive, then you will not understand that you have been deceived until you are faced with the fact that some of the information has disappeared. But you can determine the size of the drive in advance without leading to an unpleasant situation:

If the actual size of the drive matches the declared parameter, then the test will end with the phrase “Test finished without errors.” If the memory of the flash drive is actually not so voluminous, then you will see a report in which there will be two lines - “OK” and “LOST”.

“OK” is the actual memory of the flash drive, the volume that you can fill with data. “LOST” is a fake value, an empty space known only to the reflashed controller. To avoid confusion, you need to restore the actual storage capacity. This can be done through the free Chinese program MyDiskFix. The utility does not have a Russian-language interface, so you will have to navigate using the screenshot.

A flash drive is a popular way to transfer information. Even now, in the era of the Internet and cloud technologies, many people prefer to carry files on flash drives. This usually works great, but sometimes flash drives can create problems. For example, the capacity of a flash drive may suddenly decrease, and you will not be able to write to it the amount of data that you usually write. This can happen after formatting or burning a disk image.

Problems with the capacity of a flash drive can arise for various reasons, but most often the reason is that the flash drive is not partitioned correctly. In this article we will look at just such a case, so before you do anything, you need to make sure that your flash drive has the same problem. We also draw your attention to the fact that Failure to do the following correctly may result in data loss on your computer's hard drives. Therefore, be very careful and if in doubt, it is better to refuse to perform these actions.

To check the flash drive, connect it to your computer, press the Windows-R key combination and run the command “diskmgmt.msc".

So you. Here you need to inspect all the connected drives, find your flash drive and understand how it is divided into partitions. If there are unallocated areas on the flash drive, then the problem is partitioning and this can be fixed. For example, in our case, the flash drive has one working partition of 14 megabytes and two unallocated areas that occupy almost the entire volume of the flash drive.

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to fix this problem through Disk Management. You must first reset the flash drive using the command line.

Fixing flash drive partitioning

In order to correct the incorrect partitioning of a flash drive you will need. To launch it, open the “Start” menu, enter the command “cmd” in the search, right-click on the found program and select the menu item “ Run as administrator».

After the command line appears, you need to run the command “diskpart". Diskpart is a console program for working with hard drive partitions. After launching it, you will be prompted to enter the following command, which will look like the screenshot below.

After this, you need to enter the command “LIST disk". This command will display in the console a list of all drives that are connected to your computer.

After the list of disks appears, you need to understand what number our flash drive is located under. Usually this is very easy to do based on disk space. For example, in the screenshot below the flash drive is numbered 4. This is the only disk with a capacity of 16 GB; the other disks are much larger.

Next we need to select the disk with which we will work. To do this, you need to enter the command “SELECT disk=4”, in which 4 is the number of the flash drive whose volume has decreased. Your flash drive number will be different.

Now you can reset the partitioning of the flash drive. To do this, simply execute the command “CLEAN". Please note that executing this command will delete all partitions and all data from the flash drive. Therefore, if you made the wrong choice of disk at the previous stage, this may lead to data loss.

After executing the “CLEAN” command, you need to return to “Disk Management”. Now in place of the flash drive you should see a large unallocated space.

Right-click on it and select the option “ Create a simple volume».

After creating a new partition, the volume of your flash drive should be restored.