Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

[dgood]

So at work today a lady had a 1gb pqi drive that wasn't showing up anymore windows kept saying it had to be formatted to work, and linux wouldn't mount it. so I decided to reformat it to fat32 and now it says it has 7.92gb of space and I checked it on a bunch of computers sure enough 7.92gb of space, I haven't tried to load it up cuz its not mine, but is this normal? why would anyone buy a 8gb if you can reformat a 1gb to 8gb. reminds me of gpu industry software reducing pipelines.
http://www.pqi.com.tw/product2.asp?oid= ... &PROID=169 this is the product that I was using.anybody else got one of these? (there is not flash memory section is there?)

[stev]

That really neat! I just purchased a Sandisk 1Gb for only $10 new from Office Max. What a savings that would be if it "could" be formated to 8Gb.

So, what was the model of that PQI 1Gb anyways?

[kenc51]

Yes it's normal! You lost the space due to formatting, file systems need to keep a table of contents and the larger the partition is, the larger the table is.
This is why you loose all the space after a format, just like a HDD. FAT16/32 will also take more space for the table than most other file systems. You should use FAT32 if the partition is large as well as it's a bit more efficient than FAT16.
Don't use NTFS or a *NIX filesystem either! Although they might give you more useable space, not all OS's will be able to write to it!

[dgood]

I used fat32 when I reformatted it, but it's odd that it was sold as 1gb and registers 8 now is the thing.

[kenc51]

I used fat32 when I reformatted it, but it's odd that it was sold as 1gb and registers 8 now is the thing.

Crap, I didn't read this correctly! I haven't a clue why it registers a 8GB sorry.

[stev]

So, what was the model of that PQI 1Gb anyways?

Well, whats the answer?

Have other people on the web reported similar findings with this drive???

[dgood]

well I listed it on my first post as a link to the drive itself on pqi's site, but heres the name Intelligent Stick 2.0 Plus 1gb model. I haven't found any thing on the net about it, so I wanted to know if anyone had one who wanted to try to reformat it.

[DMB2000uk]

Normlly they would format to 1.92GB. So that is really weird that it is saying that its 7.92. Your eyes still good?

But you should have tried filling it up to see if the space was actually there, or it was just a mess up during formatting or something.

Dan

[dgood]

I plan on trying it when I get a chance.

[vicaphit]

excuse me while I go reformat all of my USB drives

[tnynyn]

status? im about ready to go clean out the local stores :D

[dgood]

lady took it home who I did it for so unless someone has one to verify, it's at your own risk. but if you need a thumb drive and its in the price range I say go for it and see if it works. worst case is that you get the amount you paid for.

[skier]

my 949MB(1GB) memorex travel drive reformats tooo... 949Mb