When attempting to format USB drive, capacity shows as 3.69MB of 8GB stick

Question

I am attempting to format a USB stick in Windows 10 using the standard format command (right click on drive => select 'format'). However, the format dialogue shows 3.69MB as the maximum capacity. Does anyone know why it's doing this? Will I have better results formatting from the command line? I don't want to make things more difficult for myself with a command line format if it's likely to get stuck at 3.69MB capacity afterwards, or to run a command line format with the wrong arguments for the situation.

Also, I'm formatting the USB drive ready to try installing openSUSE Leap 4.21 as a dual boot; is there any specific manner in which I should format the drive before I do this? I remember reading something about openSUSE using a different file system and not playing well with FAT32 or NTFS? If this is the case, would I maybe be better formatting the stick in Linux (I have a working VM of openSUSE Leap 4.21, I just want a proper dual boot)? If so, what would be the recommended process?

Solution 1

From the Windows 10 command line (initiated as administrator)

1. Run diskpart to get to the DISKPART> shell.
2. Run list disk to show the currently available drives.
3. Select each one by using select disk 0 where 0 is the usb drive disk number and run list partition until you can verify that the correct disk was selected. Make sure if you take the same steps you don't select the hard drive your OS is on and wipe the whole system!!.
4. Run clean (as per the following guide to remove the EFI partition and the active primary partition from the USB stick, allocated a partition taking up the full size of the USB stick in Windows Disk Management, then formatted it. The drive now formats to the correct capacity (give or take half a gigabyte).

(Not sure this will help with my openSUSE issue, but that's a separate question).

Solution 2

To restore back your 8GB you might want to use Ease Partition master. It has a way better functionallity than the default one in Windows.

Just delete all the partitions on your USB and then format. I had a similar issue when trying to restore microSD card with Windows 10 IoT image on it. It was showing 3MB in exlporer.

Comments

[Paul]

Do you know it is an 8GB stick, other than the label? Did you once have 8GB capacity (dodgy manufacturers have been known to put high capacity labels on low capacity sticks)

[Peter David Carter]

It's definitely more than 3.69MB capacity! It has an image of openSUSE on it, but it doesn't work properly. I want to reformat it and try again. The openSUSE image alone is over 4GB.

[Paul]

Aaah, right I understand. Ok, when you put the suse image on the usb, it partitioned the disk like it would a hard drive. So the first partition is only 4MB big. If you go to Disk Manager, you should be able to delete the partitions and create a new one that is the whole disk.

[Peter David Carter]

Oh, I see. It's made a single 4MB EFI System partition, then a 4.32GB active primary partition, and left 3.19GB unallocated. I wonder if the fact it's EFI might have something to do with the issues I've had booting openSUSE. Hmmmm... I have an idea...

[Peter David Carter]

Hhhhmmmmm, Windows won't let me remove the EFI partition. I can remove the larger partition but not the 4MB one. Just looking up how to do it...

[Paul]

Can you expand the smaller one to the whole disk?

[Peter David Carter]

Make the whole thing an EFI partition? Would that help me boot to/install openSUSE Linux from it? I was going to format it on my openSUSE VM and then image it on that, as it should be formatted and imaged on the correct file system then... one would hope at least...

[Admin]

This is the right answer.

[Matt Bucci]

On my system it was list disk