Ok, so a while back I purchased what was advertised as a 32 gig SD on Ebay. It turned out NOT to be 32gig even though it appeared to be. It had been formatted in a way that made it appear to be 32 gig but would corrupt the data. Thanks to paypal's buyer protection I got my money back.
Is there any way to find out what the card was originally made to be and properly format it?
Even if it is really a lot smaller I can put it to use. Or should I just pitch it?
Paul
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It's a firmware hack to get the drive to appear to be something else. You'd need to get the real firmware back on it. Just ditch it.
As an aside, it's best to avoid buying any sort of memory product on ebay. This type of trick happens a lot and most people don't notice it right away since the first XGB that the stick really is work fine.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Panasonic made an SD card format utility.... http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/sd/download/sd_formatter20.html I have had luck using it not sure if it will work for you though?
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.” Dr. Seuss
find somebody with a Linux system and then write zeros to the raw device
ie run
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/%rawdevice%
(most likely the rawdevice is sda but please check first)
also note you do not want to write to a partition you want the rawdevice
note it may in fact give you a guess as to what the real size is for your card
if this works you will have scrubbed any "hacks" off the card and can now format the card
no formating utility, no usual recovery tool will do anything here at all. They all work on the virtual drive structure level. Any attempts to write what ever to the card via its interface will not change the size setting of the card. The device is set to report : I am so big. Nothing can change it from any operating systems view, no windows, no linux, no what ever.
What is needed here is the firmware editor from the manufacturer of the controller (not essential manufacturer of the flash itself). This is the tool with which the hackers did produce this card. In some cases, it is even not possible to connect to the service interface by usb, in such case you would have to competely or at least partially (some IC legs) unsolder the controller to be able to make the required changes.
The editors are kept not easy accessible to everyone (but one can at them), since any sort of nonsense is possible with it. I have even read about the possibility to store some malware on the controllers eeprom space, imagine, you have virus on it and there is no way you can clean it or delete it, it is like hard coded in the device
As mentioned before: dispose off this junk
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland