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How To Fix External Hard Drive Stroage Becoming Smaller After Formatting?

I reformatted a 1 GB USB flash drive, and now it's a 261 MB drive. I've formatted it twice now with Disk Utility, MacOS Extended, and still the same result. Last time I reformatted, a couple of weeks ago, it was a 1 GB drive, and it's still listed as External, 1.01 GB under About This Mac. How can I get back the full 1 GB?

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Vain Rowe

Vain Rowe

Answered on Sunday, June 8, 2025

Hello, when you find that the external hard drive storage space becomes smaller after being formatted, the easiest way you can have a shot is to reformat it in Disk Utility on your Mac.

You can launch Disk Utility on your Mac > click Show All Devices on the DU interface > select your USB drive and right-click it > click Erase > rename your drive and select wanted file system and scheme > click Erase to begin the format process.

When a notification jumps out and tells you the external hard drive is formatted successfully, you can check its storage space one more time.

Take care~

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