I just ordered online a USB 2.0 Mini Disk flash drive with a 256 MB capacity. I started using it immediately upon arrival, and yesterday I noticed in the documentation ( in pretty sketchy English ) they suggested formatting the drive and running their little Disk Manager and Password program after formatting the drive. I never actually formatted the drive when I first received it, so I went ahead and did it anyway.

Well, after formatting I took a look at the capacity and noticed that 128 MB were being used of the total 256, with only 126MB free...I formatted the disk again to be sure, and still had the same result. There is no data on the drive, and I've also made sure to do a safe remove each time I take the disk out. I'm not positive if it was this way when I received the drive, but theres a good chance it wasn't because I put quite a few MP3s originally to test the drive out.

If the drive originally had 256MB of 256MB free, why would it have only 126 free after a format? I'm using Windows XP and I believe the driver is the one from Microsoft, says its the up to date one.

Which specific make and model is it since there is a variation in the way such devices can be partitioned and formatted? Sounds like the drive is partitoned maybe with one partition having been encrypted.

All the device says is "MINI" on it, and there is no company name on the documentation or disk that came with drivers. Although, I did scour the Forum for an hour and found someone with the same problem, I really needed to format using FAT and not FAT32.
So, I formatted using FAT, and instead of 128 MB being used on an empty disk, it went down to 3MB. I thought "3 isn't bad, but still isn't right," so I used KillDisk as was suggested in the post.
Ran into another problem there, disk was unpartioned afterwards and Windows thought it was write-protected for some reason ( the particular flash drive has no write-protect switch or setting ). Try as I may, I couldn't use the HP or Windows format and repartition.
Eventually had to uninstall the driver, reboot, reintall, reboot, and Windows finally let me format and repartition the drive...which finally gave me 255MB free of 255MB.

Thanks for the feedback, I should have gone for a good brand name when I ordered this, but I didn't know which companies produced good flash drives...so I just went with something low priced :rolleyes: bad move on my part, the programs and drivers on the disk were shoddy at best, and the documentation has some pretty horrible Engrish :p

I expect the software and documetation may be dodgy but the hardware itself is probably just fine. Flash memory is pretty robust stuff.

I imagine so as well. The drive itself seems to work fine now, although the first or second day I was using it I tried to backup my C++ work onto the flash drive, and all that was there when I got home were all the folders...none of the source code or anything :confused: Worked fine this afternoon though, musta been some fluke.

Mine has done the same thing a time or two, and it's a good one, Lexar Jump Drive. I copied about 20 pictures from a win98 machine, put it in my win98 machine and nothing was there...same happened one other time, but usually it works perfect. Linux copies and pastes files to and from it perfect every time, XP and 2000 seem to work fine, it's just my home win98 machine that doesn''t copy files to it correctly and that's only happened twice in almost a year..

This one is set up so that it has 5MB reserved for its security software, which I never use, I Don't have anything sensitive on it. I use it for security applications mainly - Adaware, Spybot, Firefox, Hijack This and so forth. Not a thing on it anyone can't see. Out of the box it can be partitioned with as little or as much private and passworded as you want, 5MB is reserved and is always considered private and 5MB is reserved for their software. Since I don't have XP or Win2000 the security software won't run, so I never set it up. If I did I'd be locked out of the secure area on my home windows machine :eek:

It comes formatted FAT32 so any OS can read it, I don't know why you wanted FAT unless your programming only runs on that file system, FAT went out the door with win3.11...Usually I don't think USB drives have to be formatted before use, I never formatted mine, just started using it, and still have never formatted it, I've used it nearly a year I think. Lots better than burning a new CD every time AdAware or Firefox releases a new version...Your problem with partitioning may have been related to using something other than the software that came with it, shoddy though it may be. I'll have to dig out the booklet again to be sure, but I think mine said it could be formatted straight from Windows Explorer.

And seems I remember it wasn't printed in great Engrish either...you should see some of the motherboard manuals I've downloaded for my shop...YIKES!...some of those things read like they were translated from Chinese to English by an illiterate Mexican bricklayer...

Be careful you may be insulting illiterate Mexican bricklayers! :p

That Engrish (http://engrish.com/) could be translated with software such as Google does.

With my pen drive I did not format it at first. But after transferring software and prior to changing over to music, I used the right click and format from 'My Computer' in Windows. And whenever I use it on a customer's pc, I format it again prior to using in another. Just a safety precaution to prevent the spread of malware in case there was something missed.

I was not aware of any software needed other than 98 drivers, although there may be some on the manufacturer's site for encrypting, etc.