Did I break my new 8 GB microSDHC

[Guest mychal]

I hope I did not render my new 8 GB microSDHC card the world's smallest door stop. Here's what I did...hopefully someone here can help me recover it.

- Inserted it into my Dell XPS M1710 (XP OS) laptop's internal cardreader.

- Windows Explorer did not recognize it/display it as a drive in My Computer.

- After reading a few web sites and MS's Knowledgebase, I found an MS OS patch (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934428) to install on my laptop that might help XP recognize the card. The patch was beta, I had to register, wait for an email from MS with a link and password, and then install it.

- After installing patch, card was, indeed, recognized by my laptop XP OS.

- I wanted to put bucu music on this card for my Blackjack II, so I set up a sych relationship between WMP 11 and the 8 GB card. After a while, it completed the sync, with about 6 GB of music on the card.

- I was able to navigate the directory structure on the card with my laptop's Windows Explorer.

- I removed the card and went away from my laptop for a few hours.

- When I returned, I remembered a few other files that I wanted to put on the card, so I reinserted into my laptop.

- Windows Explorer then displayed the card as a valid removable drive, but the directory structure was populated with nonsens ASCII characters. It would seem my data was messed up on the card.

- My first thought was reformat and give it another try.

- I right-clicked the card in Windows Explorer and chose Format.

- I did not look at the Capacity field, but made sure the File System was FAT32. I chose Quick Format, hit Start, and just like that, it was complete with no errors.

- Now Windows Explorer displays the card with only 3.6 GB of space on it.

- The BJ II says it only has 3.6 GB of space on it.

- Anyway to fix this back to ~8 GB of space? Or am I stuck with a half-sized card now?

Thanks.

[Guest jdm0830]

you could call tech supoort, as im guessing its relatively new. or you could format long way(might take a while but it worked on my ROKR), or if the phone can do it thats be nice too

Juan

[Guest mychal]

you could call tech supoort, as im guessing its relatively new. or you could format long way(might take a while but it worked on my ROKR), or if the phone can do it thats be nice too

Juan

I called Sandisk tech support. They walked through the issues with me and in the end recommended that I return the card. I bought it on eBay and have not gotten a response from the seller about whether they'll accept a return and exchange it.

I'm hoping there is a way to reformat the card, but XP doesn't allow me to do anything other than the 3.6 GB reformat option. If you can provide explicit instructions for the method for reformatting my card you recommend, I'd be happy to give them a try.

I cannot find any place on the phone that offers the option to format the microsSDHC card. If there is, let me know...or third party software too.

Thanks.