MicroSD Card 8GB says 1.5gb

[pkonigsberg]

Just wondering if anyone might know why, but when I plug the 8gb microSD card into an adapter onto a Windows 7 machine and right click, then Properties; it looks like there is only about 1.5gb to the card total. Does Windows not see all 8gb for some reason or are these cards not really 8gb? (8gb is printed on the card...)

Thanks!
Paul

[adafruit_support_mike]

Have you written any OS image to the card?

Windows will only see the partitions that are formatted with filesystems it understands, like FAT32. A Linux install lives on an ext3 partition, and Windows doesn't know how to talk to those.

[pkonigsberg]

Great answer! Thank you very much.

[pkonigsberg]

Unfortunately the existing fat32 partition is not large enough for the NOOBS 2.8 files.

[adafruit_support_mike]

Try doing a low-level format with the SD Association's official tool:

https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/

That maps pages of physical storage to logical blocks the computer will use when writing an OS image to the card.