16GB SDCard shrink to 11.3GB . Help needed - Hero, G2 Touch Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi everyone,
I have 16GB ADATA microSD card. After reformating through the recovery image to ext2,swapm and fat 14GB i used apps2sd for a while now. Today i wanted to wip my phone and all data on the microsd, so booted up recovery image and used Part SD to only fat32. I wanted to use the whole 16GB as a Fat32 drive again. But then I only got 14GB recognized in windows.
So i Tried to reformat again to swap,ext2 and Fat 12GB. But after trying to format back to 16GB FAT32 i lost another 2GB. I cant get the card to work in Windows anymore the only way i can access is through ADB.
Can someone help me to get my 16GB back?
j_love
update: i get the following when using parted
/dev/block # parted mmcblk0 print
parted mmcblk0 print
Model: SD SD (sd/mmc)
Disk /dev/block/mmcblk0: 12.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 12.0GB 12.0GB primary fat32 lba

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What is the output of
Code:
parted -l

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parted -l doesnt give me any output.
/ # parted -l
parted -l
/ #

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Sounds like you have a corrupt partition table on your card. It's probably best to delete all the partitions on this card and start over BUT you should use a decent partitioning tool. Without meaning to be rude, it sounds like you are using Windows' built in (i.e. very basic) drive formatting tools and that you probably aren't that familiar with using parted on the command line. I would recommend using gparted, a graphical tool. You can use this either from a USB key http://gparted.sourceforge.net/liveusb.php or an Ubuntu live cd (appears as 'partition editor'). I find that disc partitioning is a great deal easier with graphics, i.e. in this case you can see what you are doing.

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Thanks but I already used the liveCD of gparted. The main problem here is that my SDCARD is not recognized in Windows or in Linux. Also tryed Ubuntu and knoppix. I am not very familiar with linux but have some experience with command line tools.
The only way i can access the SDCARD is via adb on my Hero. Do you know any commands i could test? I already wiped the partition table and tried to make new partitions. But im stuck at 12GB.

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The thing is that in Linux, you don't mount a device, you mount a file system. In this case that would translate to partitions (there are other cases but they are not relevant here). I would ask: if you cannot 'see' the card in windows or in linux and parted -l gives no output, where is this 12GB figure coming from?
Windows typically won't show a drive in 'my computer' if it doesn't recognise the partition format so you won't see any ext2 or ext3 partitions. You won't get any pop-ups on your desktop for unformatted space in Ubuntu either. Please could you confirm that you have tried the following:
In Ubuntu connect phone via USB to PC via (on phone) 'USB/ USB connected/ mount'. This won't affect adb.
Bring up Gparted and do 'gparted/refresh devices'
Select '/dev/sdb' or whatever your memory card appears as there- your main hard drive will be shown by default.
Tell us what you see now
I am attaching a screenshot of my SD card in my phone seen like this. It shows as sdc because I have two hard drives on my PC

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ok done that. I got the following
/dev/sdf1 11.21GiB
/dev/sdf1 fat32 /media/disk 11.21GiB 11.26MiB 11.20GiB lba

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/dev/sdf1 11.21GiB
/dev/sdf1 fat32 /media/disk 11.21GiB 11.26MiB 11.20GiB lba
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If I understand correctly the above appears to show a single FAT32 partition on this device of 11.21GiB with 11.26MiB used. My suggestion is to use Gparted to delete all the partitions on this card (don't forget to hit 'apply') and then see how much unformatted space you have. Bear in mind that you must unmount your filesystem (mounting/unmounting can be done within gparted) before playing around with any of the partitions on it. You can then create new partitions on the card (again, don't forget to 'apply changes'). You will likely have to reboot your phone to seem them there.
Does this work?

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ok. I can delete create resize partitions but the diskspace is still 11.21GiB

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If you delete all the partitions on the device, how much 'unallocated space do you have after 'apply changes'? when you unmount and the remount the card?

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unallocated space is 11.21GiB

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okay try creating a single new partition on the card and then using the 'check' option in gparted. What happens then?

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Created a ext2 partition and checked it. Check was fine without errors but space is still 11.21GiB

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Okay, assuming your card is still on /dev/sdf1 please try the following:
Code:
sudo fdisk /dev/sdf
This enters the fdisk shell. Then type
Code:
p
and paste the output here. You can exit fdisk with the command
Code:
quit

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Got the following output
[email protected]:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdf
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1463.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdf: 12.0 GB, 12035555328 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1463 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00065e4e
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 1463 11751516 83 Linux
Command (m for help): quit

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does anyone have the output of fdisk->p of there ADATA 16GB microSD CARD???
I tried to change the clyinders but need the correct value

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Code:
Disk /dev/sdf: 12.0 GB, 12035555328 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1463 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00065e4e
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 1463 11751516 83 Linux
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well that's interesting. This appears to show a single ext3 partition toward the end of the card (unless I've got this completely wrong). What do you get for
Code:
parted
print
with the same partion(s)?
for reference on my 8GB card I get (on laptop):
Code:
sudo fdisk
p
gives
Code:
Disk /dev/sdb: 7948 MB, 7948206080 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 966 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000beb03
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 902 7245283+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 903 966 514080 83 Linux
and
Code:
sudo parted /dev/sdb
print
gives
Code:
Model: HTC Android Phone (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 7948MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 7419MB 7419MB primary fat32 boot, lba
2 7419MB 7946MB 526MB primary ext2

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Im Not at home right now but will post the Output tomorrow.
But I think you got it wrong. The start cylinder is 1 and the end is at 1463.
I can use fdisk to manipulate the cylinders but the size stays the same. This is really a big problem. There ar3 more users on the net with similar problems but without a solution. Hope we can get this back to normal.

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I get the following for :
[email protected]:/# parted /dev/sdf
GNU Parted 1.8.8
Using /dev/sdf
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print
Model: SD/MMC Card Reader (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdf: 12.0GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 12.0GB 12.0GB primary fat32 lba
(parted)
(parted) quit
and the following for
[email protected]:/# fdisk /dev/sdf
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1463.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)
Command (m for help): p
Disk /dev/sdf: 12.0 GB, 12035555328 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1463 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0005c05a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 1464 11753440 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

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Cheers, any chance of posting that again and using the 'code' tags in the message editor? It's a bit hard to read in the body of your post like this
thanks