If your USB drive appears to be the wrong size on your computer, it is likely the result of improperly formatting the drive. Instead of the actual 16GB or any other sized USB stick, you will see something like a couple hundred MB on it.
When you see this, don’t panic, because your disk still has its original amount of available memory. There may be other reasons, for example, your computer may be infected with a virus.
Either way, reformatting the USB drive should fix the problem and you should be able to use all the free space on the drive.
Fix USB Disk Drive Wrong Size with EaseUS Partition Master
The reason we do not use the default format option, which can be found in the context menu of your system, is that sometimes it does not help fix these kinds of problems. It is a very simple tool and does not provide details on how to find the cause and fix it.
EaseUS Partition Master, on the other hand, can reformat your disks and fix any problems on them.
- Download, install and run EaseUS Partition Master on your computer.
- Connect the USB stick to your computer and it will appear in the tool interface.
- Click on your drive in the list and you will see a menu appear on the right sidebar. From the available options on the menu, select the one that says “Delete All” to delete all partitions on your disk.
- When all partitions on the disk have been removed, right-click the disk and select the New option. This will allow you to create new sections.
- Enter the following values ??in the fields provided and then click the button labeled OK at the bottom.
Partition label – enter any name here
File system – select FAT32
Drive letter – select the letter you want to assign to the USB stick.
Determine the size and position – make sure the slider covers the entire disc size.
After formatting the USB drive, it will be completely populated in the This PC section of your computer.
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Solve the USB Drive Wrong Capacity with Boot
If you do not want to install a tool to fix the problem of incorrect USB storage capacity on your computer, you can use Bootice, a portable tool that does not require installation.
You just need to download the tool from the website, run it, specify a few parameters, and it will fix your USB drive instantly.
Download the Bootice tool from Softpedia, extract the archive files and double-click the executable file to run the tool.
Connect your USB drive to your computer, select it from the Target Drive drop-down list, and click Manage Details.
A new screen will appear showing all the partitions available on your drive. You don’t need to do anything with them – just click the “Re-arrange” button below.
The next screen will allow you to specify how you want to repartition the disk. Select the following options and click OK.
Disk Mode – select USB-HDD (Single Partition) mode
File system – FAT32
Vol Label – you can enter any here specify the name of your disk
Start LBA – enter 1
Reserved seconds – enter 32
You will receive a notification that all data on the disk will be lost. Click OK to proceed and format the disk.
When formatting is complete, you will find that your computer displays the full capacity of the USB drive.
Repair an incorrectly sized USB drive using Command Prompt
The problem with the wrong size of the USB stick can also be fixed using the command line. There is a command that allows you to delete all partitions, format the disk, and then re-create partitions on it.
Open the Start Menu, find Command Prompt, right-click it when you see it in the results, and select Run as Administrator.
Enter the following command in the command prompt window and press Enter. It will launch the command line version of Disk Utility.
diskpart
Enter the following command to view all drives connected to your computer. Your USB drive will be one of these drives.
list disk
To perform a drive operation, run the following command replacing N with the actual number of the USB drive.
select drive N
Use the following command to clear the USB stick.
clean
When the disk is cleaned up, run the following command to create new partitions.
Create main section
Finally, use the following command to format the drive in FAT32 format.
format fs = fat32 quick
After formatting the drive, you may need to disconnect it and then reconnect it to your computer. Then you will find that your computer can use the full capacity of the drive.
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