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I have a 16GB flash drive for almost seven years. It was all good before not long ago, when I tried to write a Ubuntu image onto it. I made it many times before and had no issues about. But this time, something happened, and my 16GB drive turned into 1GB. Any operating system on any computer I tried to use my USB drive with has shown me that it's strictrly 1GB and nothing to be changed.

I had a similar issue before, when this flash drive was somehow hurt by static so it wouldn't be recognized by any PC I plugged it into. That time, I used a utility to rewrite low-level chip so, as the latter contained information about what flash drive it appears (not true but similar: the drive is originally Kingston, but from that moment became Netac), the former would work again. I don't remember what that utility was but I'm pretty sure it provided options to turn any flash drive of A real storage size to A/k virtual storage size (perceived by a computer), where k≥1.

I remember that using this utility was risky since one only has exactly one chance to bring her flash drive back to life. I suppose it's worth risking in my case. After all, it isn't very expensive today to buy a 16GB usd flash drive. But I would rather scold myself to insanity for not trying.

Right this moment, I'm searching for that utility but cannot find it nor create a proper search query to help me do that. Please help me find the right utility. It may be for PC or Mac or Linux, doesn't matter.

Any disk utility app on Ubuntu or Mac (not to say of Windows) doesn't help me reach my goal. Those only can format or partition it but within the storage size perceived by an operating system, 1GB.

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

go to start
search create and format disk partitions
click on it
you will see disk1 or disk2 (removable)
removable disk will show un-allocated space
now;
goto start
type cmd.exe
right-click cmd and run as admin
type diskpart
type list disk
now note the disk number of your removable disk
type select disk x (x is number of your disk for example disk 1, disk 2)
type clean
type create partition extended
type exit
now;
goto start
type disk
choose create and format disk partitions
after that click on disk1, or disk2 which you see as removable
right click on it an select format
choose volume label as removable disk (this is important)
choose file system as fat32 (most important)
allocation unit size as default
click ok
after format is complete remove your usb
re-insert it
goto start
search disk
click on create and format disk partitions
choose your usb
right-click
format
volume label "whatever u want"
allocation unit ntfs
allocation unit size default
ok

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