32MB Flash drive: 24MB Useable

I have an old 32MB flash drive (I call it my Midget, use for distributing small items) and recently formatted it from a Gentoo liveCD as vFAT. However, only 23mb of it is now useable; I've googled for methods of recovery of the other 9mb but can't seem to find anything. Windows, Mac OSX, and multiple Linux distros read 23mb. I can't format the drive in Linux; fdisk gives me a

nowlast_lba(): I don't know how to handle files with mode 40755

error. I believe Windows will format it, but only 23mb is useable.

The 23mb is perfectly useable, but I would really like to recover that other nearly 30% of the disk. Does anyone know why this is, and how I could go about fixing it? This sounds like a problem for korg :D

And if you're wondering why I even have a 32mb drive and care to fix it, it's fun fixing things, and the cable guy still has my 1gb one…

The drive is /dev/sdc1 and mounted on /media/MIDGET/ with fs vFAT, capacity about 30.1MB, useable capacity 23mb

Thanks a lot

Why does your cable guy have your 1gb one? o.O

The 'cable guy' is the guy across the street… at least, I think he has it, someone else might. I have a 4g myself, but I put things on my 1g when I want to give someone stuff.

Would any of these be of any help to you?

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=1869&page=5

http://www.datarescue.com/laboratory/smartflash.htm

http://www.recoverdata.in/recovery-data/downloads.html

Regards, Zer0Man

Did someone call me? I don't know what you tried in windows so let's start here: Open Administrative Tools. Open Computer Management. Open Disk Management. You will see the drive listed there, Rt click it and remove the partitions. Then Rt click it and format it. If that doesn't work download: Active@ Kill Disk,wipe-out,kill disk or any drive wiping utilities. Then try formatting it. If not post back, We'll try more:D

Thank you so very much, korg! Active@ did the trick. I was right thinking it would be korg to the rescue ^.^

Richo might be god of Linux, but korg is definately the hardware man!

Just one problem now… I can't mount the device. I can assign it a drive letter in windows, but its status is given as 'healthy' but not (active), as the mounted drives are. I can write files to it by saving to z:\whatever.txt with notepad but I can't access the drive from explorer. There is a blue icon on top of its gray icon; it looks like a removed disk.

Any idea what I can do here? It is formatted as FAT with 30.8mb available. Everything seems to be working fine… except I can't mount it.

ThorsDecree wrote: korg is definately the hardware man!

Damn right he is. ;)

Just one problem now… I can't mount the device. I can assign it a drive letter in windows, but its status is given as 'healthy' but not (active), as the mounted drives are. I can write files to it by saving to z:\whatever.txt with notepad but I can't access the drive from explorer. There is a blue icon on top of its gray icon; it looks like a removed disk.

Any idea what I can do here? It is formatted as FAT with 30.8mb available. Everything seems to be working fine… except I can't mount it.

Well, you don't have to mark the partition as active in order for it to be seen. Out of curiosity, which "FAT" did you format it as?

If you can assign it a drive letter, it should be accessible. Try right-clicking the partition in Computer Management (Start, My Computer [right-click], Manage) and clicking Open to view the files.

try formatting to FAT 32. Will deffo work.

The disk is too small to format as fat32. The whole thing is 30.8mb. And, zephyr, I tried opening and exploring it from management, and it just took me to "my computer" and popped up a message saying that it cannot find location z:

I formatted it as FAT, the only option Win gave me besides FAT32. I'm guessing that's FAT16?

Edit: In CMD, DIR Z: gives me volume name and serial but then "File Not Found". Is that related?

CD Z: prints Z:\ then goes back to the current location somewhere in C:

ThorsDecree wrote: The disk is too small to format as fat32. The whole thing is 30.8mb.

Too small to format in FAT32? I think that's highly unlikely. After all, what is it formatted in by default? Most USB drives are formatted in FAT32 by default.

I formatted it as FAT, the only option Win gave me besides FAT32. I'm guessing that's FAT16?

That's what we're telling you. Choose FAT32 instead of FAT.

In Active@ try to blow it down a mode to fat 16 or just Fat. Might just be the drive itself. Been A while since a work with something that small..

Windows called it "FAT"… and when I tried formatting as fat32 through device manager it told me it could not do that because it was too small. It mounts in Linux no problem, read as vfat. I'm trying to set permissions now so I can write to it through nix.

It says it's a read-only file system (I'm in fedora right now) when I try to chmod. Is that because it's vfat or something else? I thought vfat was r/w.

mount gives me this about the device:

/dev/sdc1 on /media/MIDGET type vfat (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=lower,uid=500)

ThorsDecree wrote: Windows called it "FAT"… and when I tried formatting as fat32 through device manager it told me it could not do that because it was too small. It mounts in Linux no problem, read as vfat. I'm trying to set permissions now so I can write to it through nix.

It says it's a read-only file system (I'm in fedora right now) when I try to chmod. Is that because it's vfat or something else? I thought vfat was r/w.

mount gives me this about the device:

/dev/sdc1 on /media/MIDGET type vfat (ro,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=hal,shortname=lower,uid=500)

You were formatting it… through Device Manager? If it is recognized easily in Linux, then just fdisk it, erase the partitions, create a new partition, type "t" to change the type to VFAT, and check it again.

VFAT is r/w in Linux; NTFS is read-only, in Linux, in most cases. Oh, and the way you have it mounted is what's causing it to be read-only; the mount command shows that with "ro". Try "mount -o remount,rw /dev/sdc1".

I still can't fdisk it, and remounting it like you suggested, zephyr, gives this:

[root@localhost thorsdecree]# mount -o remount,rw /dev/sdc1 mount: block device /dev/sdc1 is write-protected, mounting read-only

The markings by the hardware write-protect switch are faded, so I can't tell what it's set to; I set the switch to the other position but got the same result when trying to mount it.

Random: Fedora 8 comes 'out-of-the-box' with full ntfs support ^.^ It's my favorite distro so far, easy to use but not annoying like ubuntu.

I'm just going to wipe it again with the windows program and format it from Linux. I'm going to bed now but I'll update sometime tomorrow. Thanks, korg and zephyr.