How do I recover the Actual USB Drive Capacity of my USB drive?

Question

I tried to reinstall the u3 launch pad program for my flash drive thinking it’ll work on my Vista operated compter yet all it did was shrink down the capacity of my USB drive from 512mb to 128 kb. During Installation I had to reformat the USB Drive. Another thing to add is I used my vista operated comp to do this operation. I tried reformatting it to change the size but the only choices were 128kb and the only file system available to choose was FAT.
I'm quite certain my USB drive has 512 mb because I've used it for about 3-4 months with at least 400+mbs of data always in it
My USB drive is a Cruzer Micro 512 USB Drive.

Answer 1

You may have set the wrong block size in the Format settings. Using the windows format utility (right click -> format), try the following:

Set allocation size to "default," or something to that effect.
Select "Quick Format"

See if that works. If not, try removing the U3 software (it could possibly still be partially on the drive) by downloading the SanDisk utility:

http://www.sandisk.com/Retail/Default.aspx?CatID=1415

Answer 2

Vista can use flash drives as if it were memory, it sounds like when you plugged it in Vista converted it into memory for the os to use......Im not sure how you check, or shut this feature off, I dont have Vista, but this is probably what happened.....

Answer 3

u cant get full capacity of ur usb because every storage device get some memory for its operation...