formatting flash drive

[myfathersson]

Just bought a 32 gig Micro SD card on line and suspected it might not
hold the whole 32 gigs. (I once had some chinese made 2 gig mem stick
which after a year only held 1 gig)

It did, so I put it in a Mac and rewrote to it 7 times. Suddenly it
only holds and formats to 2.79 gig (HFS or FAT32). Big Surprise!!

Curiously it does show up theoretically (in Snow Leopard Disk Utility)
as a 32 gig drive but only holds those 2.79 gig

Moving into the realm of making something out of nothing I was
wondering: Playing around with it, does anyone know of some
particularly destructive formatting program i can try to see what it
can do with this drive please.? I can use it on a PC running XP, Vista
7or Mac

 

[Rod Speed]

Just bought a 32 gig Micro SD card on line and suspected it might not
hold the whole 32 gigs. (I once had some chinese made 2 gig mem stick
which after a year only held 1 gig)

It did, so I put it in a Mac and rewrote to it 7 times. Suddenly it
only holds and formats to 2.79 gig (HFS or FAT32). Big Surprise!!

Curiously it does show up theoretically (in Snow Leopard Disk Utility)
as a 32 gig drive but only holds those 2.79 gig

Moving into the realm of making something out of nothing I was
wondering: Playing around with it, does anyone know of some
particularly destructive formatting program i can try to see what it
can do with this drive please.? I can use it on a PC running XP, Vista
7or Mac

What do you mean by particularly destructive ?

Obviously writing to it much more often than the hardware even
claims to support will destroy it. But whats the point of that ?

 

[myfathersson]

What do you mean by particularly destructive ?

Obviously writing to it much more often than the hardware even
claims to support will destroy it. But whats the point of that ?

I dont understand? You arent suggesting that writing to an SD card
seven times is more than it is designed for are you?

It is a MicroSD, not a CD-R?? I thought that this sort of drive was
pretty much indefinitely re-writable?

I mean destructive in that it would do a more total format than
normal. I didnt think this fell into the category of being more or
less pregnant than expected?

 

[Rod Speed]

myfathersson wrote

I dont understand? You arent suggesting that writing to an
SD card seven times is more than it is designed for are you?
Nope.

It is a MicroSD, not a CD-R?? I thought that this sort
of drive was pretty much indefinitely re-writable?

Not if you thrash it with 'aparticularly destructive formatting program'

I mean destructive in that it would do a more total format than normal.
OK.

I didnt think this fell into the category of being more or less pregnant than expected?

Do you actually want something or are you just playing silly buggers ?

 

[Frank Williams]

I dont understand? You arent suggesting that writing to an SD card
seven times is more than it is designed for are you?

It is a MicroSD, not a CD-R?? I thought that this sort of drive was
pretty much indefinitely re-writable?

No they are not they have a limited number of Write cycles, I think I
read that it was 1000 times.

 

[myfathersson]

No they are not they have a limited number of Write cycles, I think I
read that it was 1000 times.

that was what I thought. Not that 7 rewrites would kill it!

Nor a format (of any type)

I didn't kill it, it is a sub-standard product which failed in the
predicted way. I have had the money refunded on it. I was just
wondering if it could be resuscitated in some way the seller didnt
know of

 

[Rod Speed]

that was what I thought. Not that 7 rewrites would kill it!

Nor a format (of any type)

I didn't kill it, it is a sub-standard product which failed in
the predicted way. I have had the money refunded on it.

I was just wondering if it could be resuscitated in some way the seller didnt know of

Then you should have said so in the first place.

Its much more likely to just be infant mortality failure that
you wont be able to do anything about with software now.

Its possible a format may fix the problem, but any format should be fine to try.

 

[myfathersson]

Then you should have said so in the first place.

Its much more likely to just be infant mortality failure that
you wont be able to do anything about with software now.

Its possible a format may fix the problem, but any format should be fine to try.

This is almost definitely a 32 gig HongKong fake card situation. there
are lots of them around. I kinda knew it when I bought it and now the
card has died completely! NOTHING will format it or let it show up on
a PC or Mac

What I was wondering was how they manage to get the fake card to show
up as a 32 gig card in the first place? (academic troll, of course)

 

[Arno]

This is almost definitely a 32 gig HongKong fake card situation. there
are lots of them around. I kinda knew it when I bought it and now the
card has died completely! NOTHING will format it or let it show up on
a PC or Mac

What I was wondering was how they manage to get the fake card to show
up as a 32 gig card in the first place? (academic troll, of course)

This needs a firmware modification on the card that makes it
report a larger size to the computer when queried. The computer
does not test the size, it asks for it via ATA/USB(really SCSI)
command.

Arno

 

[myfathersson]

UPDATE:

The Micro SD card which was the subject of this thread has since died
completely and wont read at all: BIG SURPRISE

What is a bit surprising is that I have now bought an identical one
from a US supplier in identical generic packaging. At first I couldn't
manage to get my Mac to read it at all but I suspect that had more to
do with the Mac than the card because eventually it did both read the
card and format it numerous times. As a 32 gig drive and after the
format the OS sees it as a 32 gig drive. I haven't tried the 'stress-
test' writing-to-every-sector-seven-times overnight yet ('cos you guys
said I was putting undue stress on the card by doing this) but this
generic card seems to be OK.

Am I being overly neurotic in thinking that there is some relevance in
the first card acting like a proper 2.79 gig card for a while prior to
dying completely within a month or so? I certainly don't seem to be
able to copy the contents of my present 8 gig SD card onto this new 32
gig one but the error reports mostly seem to emanate from the 8 gig
card (cannot read file, cannot copy file 'cos it is in use, not all
files copied from originating location, eg netdial files, Android
doesn't like cards formatted as FAT32 etc etc)

 

[Arno]

UPDATE:

The Micro SD card which was the subject of this thread has since died
completely and wont read at all: BIG SURPRISE

What is a bit surprising is that I have now bought an identical one
from a US supplier in identical generic packaging. At first I couldn't
manage to get my Mac to read it at all but I suspect that had more to
do with the Mac than the card because eventually it did both read the
card and format it numerous times. As a 32 gig drive and after the
format the OS sees it as a 32 gig drive. I haven't tried the 'stress-
test' writing-to-every-sector-seven-times overnight yet ('cos you guys
said I was putting undue stress on the card by doing this) but this
generic card seems to be OK.

I would nto trust generic cards too much. It is however possible
that your first one was a copy of the one you have now.

Am I being overly neurotic in thinking that there is some relevance in
the first card acting like a proper 2.79 gig card for a while prior to
dying completely within a month or so? I certainly don't seem to be

That points to sub-standard flash or may be a side-effect of it being
too small.

able to copy the contents of my present 8 gig SD card onto this new 32
gig one but the error reports mostly seem to emanate from the 8 gig
card (cannot read file, cannot copy file 'cos it is in use, not all
files copied from originating location, eg netdial files, Android
doesn't like cards formatted as FAT32 etc etc)

Just do not trust any flash-disk too much, expecially when generic.
Same with SSDs. Quite a few people have lost even big-name
drives, e.g. from OCZ.

Arno