Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

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dgood
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Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by 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?)
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by 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?
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by 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!
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by 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.
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by kenc51 »

dgood wrote: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.
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by stev »

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


Well, whats the answer? :mrgreen:

Have other people on the web reported similar findings with this drive???
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by 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.
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by 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? :ANAL:

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.

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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by dgood »

I plan on trying it when I get a chance.
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by vicaphit »

excuse me while I go reformat all of my USB drives
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by tnynyn »

status? im about ready to go clean out the local stores :D
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by 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.
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Re: Pqi 1gb flash drive reformates to 8gb?

Post by skier »

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