[clug] Getting rid of a multiple drives on a USB drive

[Ben Nizette]

On 16/04/2011, at 3:11 PM, jhock wrote:

> Hi owen,
> 
> Thanks so much for your reply. Today I tried what you suggested and I'm
> still in the same boat. The problem isn't the paritions. It is the
> multiple drives on the one USB stick and they do not add up to the 2 GB
> that the stick is supposed to have.
> 
> When I do the fdisk -l I get two devices that are the one USB drive.
> They are:
> 
> Disk /dev/sdd: 1 MB, 1474560 bytes
> Disk /dev/sdc: 497 MB, 497549312 bytes
> 
> This totals only 500 MB when I use to have 2GB on the one drive.
> 
> Can you tell me how to combine these two devices and get back the full 2
> GB of the USB memory stick?

It's worth noting that the dmesg you posted a while back has

Apr 10 17:38:29 john-laptop kernel: [ 8233.287490] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc]
971776 512-byte logical blocks: (497 MB/474 MiB)
Apr 10 17:38:29 john-laptop kernel: [ 8233.287998] sd 6:0:0:1: [sdd]
2880 512-byte logical blocks: (1.47 MB/1.40 MiB)

Which shows that the hardware itself is reporting the smaller sizes, it isn't a software layer on top (eg partition table etc) that's causing your problem.

Given that, I doubt Linux tools are going to be able to get your space back.  If a vendor-specific tool under Windows issued some magic vendor-specific codes to get the hardware to report itself like this I strongly expect the same vendor-specific magic will be the only thing able to restore it!

The LEGEND website has a user guide than includes the ominous note "Legend USB2 drives should ONLY be formatted using the bundled GFORMAT application.  Use of other formatting software is not supported and may result in unusual device behavior."

The gFormat binary, which will have to be run under Windows (maybe try Wine but don't hold your breath), can be downloaded at:

http://www.legendmemory.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index&req=MostPopular

HTH.

	--Ben.

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> John
> 
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for the great suggestions so I had a go at it this afternoon
>>> but
>>> still no luck. I'm running UBUNTU 10 so the suggested drivers (eg.
>>> launchPadRemoval) don't work on this machine.
>>> 
>>> Below is the /var/log/messages content when I plug in the USB drive.
>>> These messages don't mean much to me. Does it help anyone else?  I
>>> still
>>> only have a 480mb and 1.5mb drives but where has the rest of the 2gb
>>> gone? Its a LEGEND memory stick if that helps.
>>> 
>>> Thanks.
>> 
>> 
>>> Apr 10 17:38:29 john-laptop kernel: [ 8233.314288] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdc]
>>> Attached SCSI removable disk
>>> Apr 10 17:38:29 john-laptop kernel: [ 8233.315717] sd 6:0:0:1: [sdd]
>>> Attached SCSI removable disk
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Try.
>> 
>> 
>> # fdisk -l
>> 
>> you should get all your hdd plus the details of /dev/sdc and /dev/sdd.
>> If necessary, unmount both
>> 
>> # fdisk /dev/sdc
>> 
>> press p (for print) and then delete any partitions
>> 
>> Now when you press 'p' it should show nothing
>> 
>> So now go ahead and add whatever partition(s) you want
>> 
>> Set the type
>> 
>> write it out
>> 
>> Them format your new partition(s)
>> 
>> GParted should do the same, from a gui
>> 
>> See what happens
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Owen
>> 
> 
> 
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