ScanDisk 16G

[Steve8x]

what a minute? did you guys say your using a 644MB ISO image? and a 2.8GB iso?

I thought the limitation with U3 is the ISO has to be 6.66MB or lesss

SIX POINT SIX SIX MB. Not SIX hundred and sixty six.

I don't think I'm wrong... maybe that is your problem? your ISO needs to be only 6.66MB at most...

its not a big deal though as you could have what takes up space on the USB partition and have your 6.66mb iso read from that...

[jathur]

what a minute? did you guys say your using a 644MB ISO image? and a 2.8GB iso?

I thought the limitation with U3 is the ISO has to be 6.66MB or lesss

SIX POINT SIX SIX MB. Not SIX hundred and sixty six.

I don't think I'm wrong... maybe that is your problem? your ISO needs to be only 6.66MB at most...

its not a big deal though as you could have what takes up space on the USB partition and have your 6.66mb iso read from that...

Hi,

You are Wrong.

With the Universal Customizer By Hack 5 you can put an iso > 6.6 mo.

I have tried and succeded to mount a 2.8 go iso on my sandisk 8go cruze and it's working.

But when this 2.8go iso is mounted, I have lost ( temporarly) the other 5,2 go.

Ater reinstall the official launcher my key have 7.48 go

@++

[IOSys]

The ISO-size is only limited by the devices capacity :

http://wiki.hak5.org/wiki/Talk:Memorex_U3_ISO_Hack

The problem people have with capacity disappearing is caused by the "Universal Customizer" being to old ..

It's from a time when a 4GB UFD was gargantual and doesn't see anything over 4GB .

Sandisk-users should find a original sandisk-tool to load the custom ISO as sandisk use a in-house controller

that is a bit different from what "the others" use .

For all non-sandisk U3-drives you can find a LP-installer/updater on the mfg-web-site.

If you extract it with 7zip or WinRar, then extract again...

Look at the directory-structure and I think you get the point :)

EDIT :

Keep in mind that U3 wasn't exactly thrilled by all this hardware-"hacking"

and may have changed the LP-installers or even the controller to make it harder to do .

Still, the LP-installers can write to the CD-ROM and reformat the entire device so there IS a way ..

[TheMadProff]

-- No longer a meaningful post, images no longer hosted --

Edited September 4, 2013 by TheMadProff

[Steve8x]

The ISO-size is only limited by the devices capacity :

http://wiki.hak5.org/wiki/Talk:Memorex_U3_ISO_Hack

The problem people have with capacity disappearing is caused by the "Universal Customizer" being to old ..

It's from a time when a 4GB UFD was gargantual and doesn't see anything over 4GB .

Sandisk-users should find a original sandisk-tool to load the custom ISO as sandisk use a in-house controller

that is a bit different from what "the others" use .

For all non-sandisk U3-drives you can find a LP-installer/updater on the mfg-web-site.

If you extract it with 7zip or WinRar, then extract again...

Look at the directory-structure and I think you get the point :)

EDIT :

Keep in mind that U3 wasn't exactly thrilled by all this hardware-"hacking"

and may have changed the LP-installers or even the controller to make it harder to do .

Still, the LP-installers can write to the CD-ROM and reformat the entire device so there IS a way ..

well im sure at least 1 of the creators of the u3 technology knew capacity of such a device and what it can do and that person helped bring it to life ;) maybe not all of U3 but "someone" was thrilled about the new device

a CDROM drive that fits in your pocket :)

Last time I tried the LP-installer from sandisk neither placing the iso in the same dir or spoofing the sandisk website to my localhost worked at flashing the cdrom partition...

the first thing was taken out purposely as I've heard... The second thing to me appears like sandisk is not only not loading iso's from the directory of lpinstaller, but they are also doing a check on the ISO file it self... If it is not the ISO from sandisk, it gives you a b$ error message!

So in order to use the lpinstaller, I'd think you'd have to hack it, find where in the program its checking the ISO file if its the one thats "supposed" to be flashed, instead of a custom one...

If the program is packed though it will make it a bit harder... (i have almost no experience with unpacking personally) although you could just modifying its memory while its running if thats the case instead of patching the executable...

basically it all comes down to a conditional jump somewhere along the lines... once you find it! it will accept your ISO as if it was from sandisk itself!

cmp [eax+12], 01
jne InvalidISOGiveThisHackerTheErrorMessage
jmp FlashISO

lets say eax+12 is the memory location, the one which holds the value which decides whether the iso is valid or not

either nop out the cmp and the jne or turn the jne into an unconditional jump

for those not ASM minded, JNE means JUMP IF NOT EQUAL (conditional jump)

JMP means ALWAYS JUMP (Unconditional jump)

of course it could be setup differently than that! but you get the idea, it'll be something like that :) happy hunting

Another option would probably to reverse engineer lpinstaller or universal customizer, and figure out how it flashes the cdrom partition, then you could make an updated version of UC which removes the problem of shrinkage ;)

[IOSys]

For Sandisk it's a question of finding out what versions of the LP-installer have the capability

to load a ISO from it's own DIR, I know LPinstaller.exe v 1.0.0.12 can and works with drives up to 4GB .

At some point that was removed, instead the ISO was downloaded to your temp-dir and loaded from there

once you clicked "apply update" .

Also, the hardware-revision may have some importance,"old" LP-installers may not work with newer revisions ?

As for how the LP-updater does it ... I suspect that the LP-installer is in fact a modified version of the production-tool, somehow it communicates with the controller-chip and it's the chip doing the actual transfer ..

[Rizuwan]

I have same problem with u also.. my pendrive 8GB is lost capacity when use Universal Customizer for my u3 sandisk 8gb.. it becomes 3.65gb(4GB) from my 7.65GB(8GB) when i use it..

i have found this fix..

u can download this Fixer to get your lost capacity u3 back... enjoy!!~

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GIT0SPXV

Reference:http://forums.gonzor228.com/index.php?topic=85.msg370#msg370

[vanguard]

I heard of it, that some U3-sticks are not able to store files greater than 3GB. I suppose, it is because the second drive is controlled by 16-bit. Mybe you should try to make a partition with fdisk on a 64-bit system, as Windows ist mostly only 32-bit.

Delete the second partition and create a new one with fdisk in linux. Make it FAT32 and format it in linux using the command for example "mkfs.vfat /dev/sda5" (or whatever your device is seen).

If you got questions, feel free to ask again.

Good luck !

vanguard

[Steve8x]

I heard of it, that some U3-sticks are not able to store files greater than 3GB. I suppose, it is because the second drive is controlled by 16-bit. Mybe you should try to make a partition with fdisk on a 64-bit system, as Windows ist mostly only 32-bit.

Delete the second partition and create a new one with fdisk in linux. Make it FAT32 and format it in linux using the command for example "mkfs.vfat /dev/sda5" (or whatever your device is seen).

If you got questions, feel free to ask again.

Good luck !

vanguard

Why would you format it as FAT32???

That is the reason why they cannot hold files larger than 4GB, because its a limitation with FAT32!

If your going to format it, I would suggest formatting it as NTFS, that way you CAN store files larger than 4GB and both windows and linux can read the files on it ;) (maybe mac too im not sure)

P.S. the only reason it comes formatted as FAT32 from the factory is for compatibility reasons, Some people are still using older operating systems I guess(Win9x) So they have all drives formatted FAT32 for that reason.

[IOSys]

No, the reason it comes FAT-formatted from the factory is that FAT performs better on flash-RAM.

Using NTFS will increase the number of writes to flash, f.ex it will have to update the access-time of

each file you touch, on MLC flash this requires a cell-erase and then a write, this extra write-activity will

reduce the expected lifetime of your drive to some degree and obviously wont speed things up either.

If your drive looses capacity after running the Universal Customizer (UC) you can not regain the capacity

with normal disk-tools under widow$ or Linux. The controller will simply not be able to recognise the lost capacity

until you run a UC that support more than 4GB.

This is because the UC, unlike normal disk-tools, actually initializes, checks and formats the physical flash-ram .

As for the problem with FAT not supporting files larger than 4GB :

If you want to bring a movie with you on your flash-drive it would be better to extract the ISO

and keep the stick FAT-formatted .

Many of the cheapo DVD-players with USB-ports won't recognise NTFS-formatted removable drives .

You should only use NTFS on flash-media if you need the advanced features like permissions,encryption etc

[vanguard]

I agree, FAT32 is no good idea to store files greater than 4GB on an usb-stick. And NTFS has the problem, that the linux drivers are told not to be very stable, althoug linux is possible to read NTFS (but still got problems to write it).

But if I understood it correctly, the main problem was "the partition is too small", not "files bigger than 4GB cannot be stored". Please correct me.

Another way is, to use ext2 or ext3 on the usb stick, from windows you can access ist by adding some tools (I forgot its names, was it "ext2read.exe" ?? Just google) and from linux it can be read natively.

And I think, ext2 is not having the limitations of 4GB size of files, when I am correct.

[Steve8x]

Well thanks IOsys for clearing that up! I haven't formatted my flash drive and I think I'll just keep it at FAT32 to let it live its life to the fullest...

@vanguard:

Its true files bigger than 4GB cannot be stored on FAT32 formatted drive... I know this because I was unable to copy a file larger than 4GB to my 500GB external HD. I had plenty of space on it, so I knew lack of space was not the problem... I researched online and discovered that FAT32 cannot store INDIVIDUAL files larger than 4GB.

So what I did was converted(not formatted) the drive to NTFS, and then the file was able to be copied onto it no problem... You can convert at FAT32 drive to NTFS but not vise versa. To go back to FAT32 it has to be formatted... So keep that in mind...

But a solution to the problem for flash drives(if you really want to keep them at FAT32) you can simply split the file thats larger than 4GIG into parts... Then on the computer you copy the files parts to, the parts can be put back together to restore the original file :)

[PUNiZZLE]

Nissin,

I've had the same exact issue as you. I own the same SanDisk 16GB Micro Cruzer.

Follow This Guide to gain your space back.

Hope it helps! :)