zondag, maart 07, 2010

Windows only sees 200MB of my USB: solved


I have this 8GB USB-drive. I use it on my Mac OSX. Wanted to transfer some files to a Windows XP machine. But Windows only saw a 200MB drive. Even after formatting it on the Windows machine, Windows only saw 200MB.

I looked around the internet. Only to find more people having the problem. And it also affects people wth 16GB, 32GB, 64GB drives etc. They all have the problem Windows only sees part of the capacity of the USB drive.

After trying several things and reading many posts, what solved my problem is running the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool - v2.1.8" program. The file contains 2 programs, one running on DOS, and one running on Windows (the W in the end of the filename). I tried the Windows-version and this formatted my USB-drive as a 8GB drive on my Windows machine. OSX still recognized it as 8GB, so we were able to transfer the files.

Image Source: ComputeLive.

23 opmerkingen:

  1. Thank you Raoul! This was exactly what i needed using my USB stick on my mac and also in parallels. thanks :)

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  2. Anoniem12:42 a.m.

    Well, hot darn. After reinstalling all my usb drivers, spending a couple hours searching the web, and tearing my hair out in frustration, this worked. Now I just wish I knew WHY!
    Thx

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  3. Anoniem9:01 p.m.

    Thanks a bunch! Now I got my 32gb usb back on the run, thanks to your blogpost ^^

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  4. Thank you! What a great tool! Typical that another vendor has to produce a piece of software to fix a Microsoft problem.

    My drive is now showing as the full 4GB!

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  5. Anoniem4:49 p.m.

    god bless the person who made this tool. I just want to know why this problem occured?

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  6. Anoniem10:01 a.m.

    What they said!

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  7. Anonymous7:23 a.m.

    god bless the person who made this tool. I just want to know why this problem occured?

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  8. Anonymous7:23 a.m.

    Well, hot darn. After reinstalling all my usb drivers, spending a couple hours searching the web, and tearing my hair out in frustration, this worked. Now I just wish I knew WHY!
    Thx

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  9. Billy_yach822:29 a.m.

    thank you so much... I solve the problem..... thank you again....

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  10. thanks for sharing, this solved my problems! :) :)

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  11. thank you so much dear.you just saved me from throwing my USB device in a trash.

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  12. Sam Jay9:35 p.m.

    thanks a loooooooooooot     i love you

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  13. Sa Mousavi158:20 p.m.

    thank you man you helped me a lot

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  14. Bea B.3:16 a.m.

    Loads of thanks to you! :)

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  15. Mateoalboreda12:24 a.m.

    OMG. I love you man.

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  16. Thanks a lot, very useful tip which helped me reformat a 16GB USB drive which had previously been reformatted on a Mac, then re-reformatted on a PC... and was showing only a 200MB partition, with no way to access the remaining space.

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  17. thank you. this was perfect

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  18. nikolas9:48 p.m.

    perfect thanks for the advice

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  19. I looked deeper into this problem and this problem occurs because of a hidden 200mb EFI partition that is created when formatting as a GUID partition. I was able to see and remove this partition by enabling Debug mode in Disk Utility and showing hidden partitions. So formatting as DOS and making sure the option to format as MBR also fixed the issue. Windows only sees 1 partition on Flash drivers... hence the problem...

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    Reacties
    1. Wow, nice analysis Kevin! Thanks for sharing!

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    2. Anoniem6:16 a.m.

      Thank you. I tried this with exFAT also (select Master Boot Partition) and it works perfectly in Windows 7.

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  20. So, basically this HP tool just deletes that hidden 200MB partition.

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