Mounted phone memory card shows incorrect disk size.

[Brian McKee]

On 08/05/07, Johan Grönqvist <johan.gronqvist at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a phone (SonyEricsson K550i) with a 2 GiB memory card, and try to
> transmit files to the card by connecting the phone via USB and mounting
> the phone card as a USB disk.
>
> My immediate problem is that copying to the memory card is unreliable.
> It has not destroyed data that was previously on the card, but the files
> I wish to copy do not always end up on the card.
>
> After lots of problems I recreated the filesystem on the disk and
> created a partition of size 1.9 GiB. The size displayed by "df -h" is
> (after some copying) much larger than the actual size of the memory
> card. (Around 6 GiB.) The command "dmesg" shows some errors like this
> (lots of them)
>
> [ 7788.752000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984117, limit=3984057
> [ 7788.752000] attempt to access beyond end of device
> [ 7788.752000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984118, limit=3984057
> [ 7788.752000] attempt to access beyond end of device
> [ 7788.752000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984119, limit=3984057
> [ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
> [ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984058, limit=3984057
> [ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
> [ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984059, limit=3984057
> [ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
> [ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984060, limit=3984057
> [ 7788.756000] attempt to access beyond end of device
> [ 7788.756000] sdc: rw=0, want=3984061, limit=3984057
>
> I interpret this by guessing that my computer believes the size is 6
> GiB, and tries to write to a position beyond the end of the real disk.
> To my astonishment, the transfer of files often (not always) works.
>
> I do not know if the fact that I use FAT16 is a problem. I have one
> partition of size 1.9GiB. Wikipedia says there is a limit at 2 GiB in
> the filesystem FAT16, but I would have expected GParted to complain if I
> created an illegally large partition. The internal memory of the phone
> is accessible to me as a FAT16 partition, and I therefore chose FAT16
> for the memory card as well.

Can't prove it, but linux tools often let you shoot yourself in the
foot on the assumption 'you know what you are doing' :-)  I'd
repartition that card as Fat32....