This is bizarre. I needed to reformat my USB Flash Drive so that it was in NTFS format so I could grab an ISO image of the new Microsoft Windows 8.1 and while I figured out how to get to the format program, when I reformatted my 16GB flash drive to the needed format, it ended up only showing that it had 200MB of capacity. 200MB? Really, Microsoft? How the heck do I get this to work?
We’re on the same path, my friend, because I too hit this problem for exactly the same reason: I’ve been using a Kingston 32GB USB Flash Drive without incident for a long time, even using it with Windows 8 as a simple “old school” file transfer tool. Apparently, however, I wasn’t hitting any of the file size limitations on the FAT32 format so it worked just fine. Until the 3.6GB ISO disk image that’s part of the Windows 8.1 preview release. A file that size is just too darn big and the NT File System (NTFS) becomes a requirement.
For all of Windows 8’s refinements and Metro UI changes, however, working with this sort of thing is still crude and visibly unchanged since, what, Windows 2000? You’ll see what I mean.
Worst is that when I hit that weird 200MB flash drive glitch the easiest solution I found was to download and use a third-party flash drive formatting program from my old corporate alma mater, Hewlett-Packard. I’ll explain as I go, but let’s start with the official Microsoft way of reformatting a USB flash drive in Win8 since hopefully that’ll work fine for most everyone.
Plug in your thumb drive, then go to your Charms bar and type in “device manager”:
As usual, once you see the program you want highlighted with the box, just press Enter or Return and it’s launched.
Now in Device Manager locate your flash drive, and right-click on it:
Choose “Properties” to see how it’s configured:
On some USB flash drives, you’ll find that the default setting is “quick removal”, but when you go to format it, NTFS simply isn’t an option. The solution if you encounter that problem is to go to the Policies window, as shown above, and click “Better performance”. In fact, I always check “Better performance” on Policies because I’d rather have it be slow to eject and fast to read/write than otherwise. Your choice may vary.
Now, let’s try to format the drive using the standard Microsoft Windows 8 toolset.
To do that, go into File Explorer (tip: if you can’t ever find it in Windows 8, simply use the Search charm to search for “File” and press Return. With a tiny bit of practice, you’ll have it up in just a few seconds) then right-click on the device:
Choose “Format…” and you’ll see all your options, including what the system thinks is the default size of the drive:
You can see that my Kingston USB flash drive is obviously confusing the operating system. 200MB? Really? It’s 32GB, actually. On the plus side, though, I am seeing NTFS as one of the format options, so that’s good. Do a quick Google search on “200MB flash drive windows” and it’s surprising how often this problem arises for people. And that it’s still in Windows 8? Definitely weird.
So that solution path doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. I’ve done the format, hoping that it’ll magically just figure out the correct size as the format proceeds. It doesn’t.
Instead, the solution I found that worked well is a little Windows utility from Hewlett-Packard called HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool [CNET Download link]. It’s from 2009. And it still solves a problem that’s around in mid-2013. Ah, gotta love Windows.
Download it and launch it. Looks a lot like the Windows format utility, actually:
Smartly, it doesn’t even show you the capacity of the drive with the hint that you can change it. It’s a solid-state device, a USB flash drive, there’s nothing you can do to change its capacity!
I picked the drive format — NTFS — and clicked “Start”, and it’s just a second or two after that I took the screen shot above, which is why there’s a progress bar just starting.
It did take a long time, about five minutes to reformat my 32GB flash drive. Yours might be faster or slower depending on your computer and the drive itself, but once it’s done a confirmation window appears that shows that, indeed, it figured out the correct size:
Drop all the commas and extra precision digits and it’s 31.44 GB. Close enough. Certainly close enough that when I copied the Windows 8.1 preview ISO onto the flash drive, it happily copied on without a hiccup.
Now why the Windows flash drive formatting tool can’t handle the Kingston flash drive? That’s inexplicable. But thank goodness for my friends at Hewlett-Packard. Their crude tool is just what’s needed to solve this otherwise vexing problem.
i have a similar problem. I have a 32gb toshiba and now I only have 8mb. did all the steps and its still showing me 8mb. any comments?
Try reformatting it?
the “HP disk utility” you have linked here has a hidden downloader. The files(3) it pulled down all tripped my antivirus
The download from CNET? They claim that they scan all archived software for malware. That’s odd, but thanks for the heads up!
Instead of using a third party tool, you can also do it from the Command Prompt (type CMD in the Start menu, or search for Command Prompt if you’re stuck with the new style Metro Start screen):
enter the following command:
diskpart
That should open a new window that looks a lot like the Command Prompt. Now, enter the command:
list disk
This will display a list of all your disks. Locate the flash drive you need to fix based on its size, and notice the disk number in the left column. Then, enter the command:
select disk # [replace # with the disk number for your flash drive]
Then perform the following commands. They may take a minute to finish, especially the second and third ones – be patient.
clean
create partition primary
format fs=NTFS quick
Once the final step finishes, you should have your flash drive ready to use with its full capacity instead of 200MB.
Thanks for your support. After struggling for some time i finally got a solution here. I have even been encouraged to do some more research on FAT and NTFS File systems
Thank you very much and thanks HP. I spent several hours before and this fixed it in minutes.
And this in December 2015. So again big thanks. Michael Swtzerland
Thanks.. it realy helped 😉
Many Thanks Dave Tyler!
I have a PNY 16gb Flash Drive that malfunctioned on me and it only read 200mb of storage space, the rest of the storage space was unallocated for some reason. Very similar to your problem. I’m absolutely puzzled how my PNY flash drive switched to FAT32 by itself?
Anyway, My PNY runs perfectly after the HP Format Tool.
thanks- Ghass
THANKS BROTHER………………………………
Awesome Solution for a very disturbing and time consuming Problem……………….
Once again Thanks
thanks for the tutorial, very helpful. Life is good again.
Many thanks, simple solution for a very disturbing problem.
Link to ever-critical software mentioned, is dead. Had to employ the Google, lost foot in garbage disposal, somehow. Here’s a new link to the HP software: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool.shtml#download
Seems to be working (slowly). As if the reason i needed the USB wasn’t tedious enough to begin with. grr. but this solution WORKED, so thanks! 😀
Great, thanks for the updated link for the software, Sheila!
You save my day, thank you.
It worked as desired, thanks for sharing information
Worked well
Thanks for information and link
Damn, this info. came like a life saver!! Thanks a ton buddy!
great! worked like a charm! priceless! thank you so much from Switzerland!
Thanks a lot mate it works like a charm.Felt so good to see my 32 GB back instead of 200 Mb .
Works, just dont use the Quickformat option or it will tell you the stick is write protected.
thanks for the solution 🙂
Thanks! Worked perfectly!
Thanks for info and link. Worked perfectly!
Thanks for the post. Worked like a charm
Thank you! Works well
Thanks Man! Works like a Charm!! 🙂
Really Happy Now to see my computer say it’s a 16 GB Disk! 😛
Excellent, will let me install Linux 🙂
Worked perfect. So simple. Thanks!
Just use GParted. So much easier.
Cheers!
IT SAY FAILED TO FORMAT THE DEVICE. IT DOESN’T WORK AT ALL .