SD card problems... .

David333

I've just bought an 8GB SDHC card for my Asus Eee 701. I put it in and it registered as 8GB and then I restored a ghost/image/file from 'DriveImage' back onto it (my previous settings from my previous SD card). At this point everything worked perfectly apart from my 8GB card only showed up as 1GB... .

I've looked under the Windows Disk Management and the SDHC card is there, showing as being 'healthy'. The bottom level says that it is 8GB, but the top level says that it's only 1GB and has a partition... .

What I think has happened is somehow I've partitioned my new SDHC card, but I'm not sure how to unpartition it. I'm not even totally sure what partition means but I imagine that this would explain why only 1GB out of an 8GB card is showing, when the computer can recognise the full capacity in disk management... . Does anyone have any ideas please...?

MX5huggy

If you reformat the card what size does it say it is?

I think it is to do with the drive image you copied on to it.

fwor

If your previous SD card was 1GB in size, or if it was larger but only had a single 1GB partition on it, then restoring it as an image onto the new SD card will result in an identical 1GB partition, and the rest of the drive will be unused space.

Depending on the tools you have to hand, you can either re-size the partition to take up the whole space, or add one or more additional partitions, which will then (in Windows) appear as separate drive letters.

There are quite a few partition editors available that will re-size partitions. GPARTED is a good one - it's Open Source and free.

David333

Thanks so much for the reply. I've tried to download Gparted to run from my USB drive but I can't seem to get it to run. To be honest, I'm not really sure what I'm doing... . I've tried googling but can't seem to find any idiot's guides or idiot-proof programs... .

fwor

I'm not sure how locked-down the version of Linux on your Asus is, but if you go to add/remove programs and type gparted as the search term, does it find the Gnome Partition Editor?

David333

Oh, I have Windows XP... . I should've stuck with Linux!

fwor

David333 wrote: »

Oh, I have Windows XP... . I should've stuck with Linux!

Well if you're not worried about bandwidth, you could download an Ubuntu LiveCD, boot that and run GPARTED from the CD without changing anything on your Eee. (If you are worried about bandwidth there are much more compact ways to get it anyway).

Once up and running as a LiveCD you need just 3 clicks to start the Partition Editor. Be sure that you select the ~right drive~ as GPARTED will probably by default show the Eee's hard drive, not the SD card, and you will need to Unmount the SD card (just right-click on it and it's one of the options) before you can resize it.

David333

The Eee doesn't have a CD player unfortunately... . Will it work from my USB flash drive...?

fwor

Probably...

You'll need to run the Ubuntu 8.10 LiveCD on a "proper" PC (sorry) with both CD and USB port. Go to System, Administration, Create a USB startup disk.

However, if you have an SD card reader on the "proper" PC, it would be easiest to do the job on that, then move the SD card back to the Eee. Boot up the LiveCD, go to System, Administration, Partition Editor, find the SD card, right-click and unmount it, resize it (you can just stretch it with the mouse pointer), Apply and you're done.

David333

I really appreciate your help with this. I'm downloading Ubuntu 10 at the moment. Once it's downloaded onto a real computer, do I just burn it to a CD and then restart my computer with the CD in...? Will that boot my computer in ubuntu...? Sorry, I'm not too bad at 'messing around' with Windows but outside that, I'm very much outside my comfort zone... .

fwor

What you will have when the download is complete is a .iso file, which you burn to CD (or DVD) as a disk image. It's a standard option within Roxio, Nero, etc.

Then boot the PC with the CD in. If that fails, you will need to go into the BIOS and change settings so that it boots from CD-ROM before hard disk. This is easy to do, but you may not need to.

Make sure you choose the "Try Ubuntu..." option when it boots, so that it leaves the PC's HDD unchanged.