Help! My 2GB microSD will hold only 500MB

[Barry_From_Eastenders]

I have a SanDisk 2GB microSD that will not let me drop more than just shy of 600MB onto it. XP and Mobile 5.0 show that there is still over 1.31GB free. Does anyone know what the problem might be?

Thanx
Barry

[iwakura43]

You could back up your data and try reformatting it.

[ZenBeam]

Floppies had a limit on the number of files that could be in the root directory. Maybe delete a few of the files, make a directory, and see if you can put more data in the subdirectory.

[hekk]

Did you buy the card from a store, or from eBay?

I ask because fake memory cards absolutely flood eBay, and appear genuine to the naked eye. Many are cheaper knockoffs that overstate their capacity.

From Dan’s Data

Minor fakes are a cheaper brand of card with fake SanDisk stickers, which may well work perfectly well. Major fakes look like, say, a 2Gb card, but don’t actually have that much storage, leading to entertaining errors when your write operations fall off the end of the memory that’s actually there.

[mks57]

The software in some devices, such as cameras and calculators, may have difficulty with 2GB flash memory cards due to bugs and/or limitations in the file system software. This is a common problem in devices that were designed when flash memory cards were much smaller. I have a camera that came with an 8MB card, and it chokes on anything larger than 1GB.

[Pushkin]

I bought a cheap flash drive on EBay that worked for a few days on its 8GB capacity then suddenly went down to 5.5GB. I can’t see at all any of the files that are taking up this space, can flash drives be formatted like floppy discs?

[Flander]

@Pushkin

I bought a cheap flash drive on EBay that worked for a few days on its 8GB capacity then suddenly went down to 5.5GB. I can’t see at all any of the files that are taking up this space, can flash drives be formatted like floppy discs?

Yep, put the flash drive in your computer, right click, format.

[Captain_Jinks]

I do see a similar problem on occasion (I’m in IT support). Reformatting has never failed me.

Also note that a U3-type drive (the kind that runs software such as Mozilla directly from itself) will, of course, not allow you to save to its rated capacity, because the programs loaded take up space.

[Pushkin]

I hate my little U3 drive, and all that “helpful” software it insists on shoving at you.

[Barry_From_Eastenders]

I purchased it from Best Buy.

I’ll try the format/folders suggestions.

Thanx
Barry

[Noelq]

@Pushkin

I hate my little U3 drive, and all that “helpful” software it insists on shoving at you.

You can remove it. www.u3.com/uninstall will take you to the removal software.

Its the first thing I do whenever I encounter it.

[Barry_From_Eastenders]

The folders thing worked. Thanx!

[Bookkeeper]

I also ran into this “number of files in the root” limitation when I bought a 1GB SD memory card for a digital photo frame and attempted to load all our cat photos on it. I would get a disk full error when only a small percentage of the photos were copied over. Finally I did as suggested above and created a Photos folder on the card and put all the pictures in it with no problem. The digital frame is perfectly happy with reading from the folder instead of the root.