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I have a 32GB Sandisk Cruzer Flash drive when I connected it to my PC it read 14MB. What went wrong and How can I fix it?

Hennes
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Jose Reyes
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    http://superuser.com/questions/937410/flash-disk-capacity-turns-from-32gb-to-4mb/937419#937419 watch this. – Francisco Tapia Sep 09 '15 at 18:36
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    What is the "it" that read 14MB? The drive? A partition on it? A filesystem on a partition on the drive? Or what? – David Schwartz Sep 09 '15 at 18:43
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    [toshiba 16gb drive turns to 4mb](http://superuser.com/questions/940438/toshiba-16gb-drive-turns-to-4mb?lq=1), [My 8GB Toshiba USB drive became 4mb in size how can i restore it?](http://superuser.com/questions/797304/my-8gb-toshiba-usb-drive-became-4mb-in-size-how-can-i-restore-it?lq=1), [16 GB USB flash drive capacity down to 938 MB](http://superuser.com/questions/752874/16-gb-usb-flash-drive-capacity-down-to-938-mb) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Sep 09 '15 at 18:59
  • Also related: [How do I fix my USB drive to get its original 8 GB size back?](//superuser.com/q/382242/354511), [USB drive not showing full size](//superuser.com/q/88509/354511), [16 GB USB flash drive shows as 16 MB and is unusable](//superuser.com/q/50207/354511), [1 GB space left after formatting a 16 GB flash drive?](//superuser.com/q/339489/354511), [16 GB USB flash drive turned to 1 GB after writing an ISO image onto it](//superuser.com/q/759602/354511),  and [Toshiba pen drive shows 4 MB instead of 8 GB; what could have happened to it?](//superuser.com/q/927680/354511) – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' Jun 02 '17 at 20:09

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If you have used this drive previously, you may need to format it correctly for your use. If you're using Windows, flash drives are typically formatted in exFAT or FAT32. If you are going to use this drive between Mac OS X/Windows/Linux, exFAT will allow all operating systems to read/write on the drive. If this is a Windows USB drive, FAT32 should be fine for your needs. If you need to store files larger than 2GB, choose NTFS.

To format the drive, you can open up the Computer menu and right click on the drive. SanDisk has a great tutorial here. Note that even though your drive may have a physical 32GB capacity, the entire 32GB will never be available due to the way the hardware is configured so that it can be read by an operating system.

Daedalus
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  • Francisco, that is an excellent link, thanks for including that while I was writing my response. – Daedalus Sep 09 '15 at 18:43
  • under which scenario you could find a 14MB Flash drive? do not take it as cricticizm to your post i mean im 99% sure he bought a counterfeit and the 1% is the error margin because his question is very low quality. – Francisco Tapia Sep 09 '15 at 18:46
  • I don't know his usage history. Since it's 32GB, if he's attempted to edit it before, he may have unallocated space on the drive or a broken partition. Thanks for alerting us of the counterfeit drives, I was not aware this was an ongoing issue. – Daedalus Sep 09 '15 at 18:48
  • just be left in clear. im not discarding your answer. – Francisco Tapia Sep 09 '15 at 18:48
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    It could be fake ot it could have a 14MiB partition (abd a few other partition, e.g. one of 32GiB minux 14MiB which windows *helpfully* does not show). – Hennes Sep 09 '15 at 18:49