Malware infections can sometimes alter the storage capacity of USB flash drives, making them appear significantly smaller than their actual size. For example, a 16 GB USB drive may only show 2 GB of available space in Windows. Even after removing the malware or formatting the drive, the reduced capacity often persists. Fortunately, a small yet powerful tool called BootIce can help restore your USB drive to its original full capacity.
What is BootIce?
BootIce is a free, portable Windows utility that allows you to manage, partition, and format USB drives. Since it is a standalone executable, no installation is required – just download and run the file. BootIce can be downloaded from https://archive.org/download/BOOTICEx64_1.3.3.2 since its original website is no longer working.
Steps to Restore USB Capacity Using BootIce
1. Launch BootIce
- Insert the affected USB flash drive into your computer.
- Run BootIcex64.exe by double-clicking it.
- If prompted by User Account Control (UAC), grant administrator permissions to proceed.
2. Select the USB Drive
- In the BootIce window, select your USB drive from the Destination Disk dropdown menu.
- Click Parts Manage to open the partition management window.
3. Repartition and Format the USB Drive
- In the partition management window, click Re-Partitioning.
- In the Removable disk repartitioning window, select USB-HDD Mode (Single Partition).
- Select the filesystem to be FAT32 and select Optimize internal structure.
- Click OK to proceed.
4. Final Confirmation and Formatting
A confirmation dialog will appear—double-check that you have backed up your data. Click OK to begin the repartitioning and formatting process. Wait a few seconds for the process to complete.
5. Verify the Restored Capacity
Once the process is finished, a success message will appear. Now remove the USB drive from your computer’s USB port and then re-attach it back. Open Windows Explorer and check your USB drive’s capacity – it should now be restored to its full size. You can reformat the USB drive using Windows’ built-in formatting tool or start using it right away.
By following these steps, you can successfully recover your USB flash drive’s full storage capacity and ensure it functions properly again.
Thanks so much ,this application of BOOTICE has helped me to solve my flash drive .
Thanks, Thanks God blessing you my brother.
Thanks I so much
I HAVE 16 GB SANDSISK CRUSER PEN DRIVE WHICH I BOUGHT 2 YEARS BACK BUT NOW SIZE HAD BECOME 71 MB AFTER RECOVERY IT CHANGED TO 3.72 GB HOW CAN I GET FULL SIZE BACK ? PLS
PLS HELP
THANKS
BRO
plzzz help i have a 16 gb usb its showing 4 mb i followed your method but its still the same problem what should i do ????plzz help
Purchased 512 GB flash drive on eBay from China that was actually 8 GB but now I know better. Wasn’t expensive.
ReFormat USB disk > USB-HDD mode (Multi-Partitions)
Set partition 1 to what you think the flash drive size actually is (other software can help determine this)
Hide the remaining 500 GB under ‘Operation’ of main Partitions Management window
Return to My Computer and format
I’m so grateful, thanks a bunch.
I don’t believe that this is caused by malware only. I have got this issue after doing a reformat with Boot-it Bare Metal software. I am sure of what I am writing here because Boot-it Bare Metal made unusable two USB keys and they both have the same issue that cannot be resized to original 8GB size. The USB keys now show only 125MB size. The problem with software makers is that in quite a few instances they do a damage and they don’t have routines to fix it.
Hope it works. Thanks! UPDATE: Works like a charm, it made my 28GB flash drive whole again. Before it would only show 3GB of available space. It even gave me a little more space 29.7GB total!
Thanks buddy!
Just connect to a Linux distribution and format the flash drive. I have used Kali Linux…. I recovered my drive to full 8GB… Simple humble… 🙂
Thanks its work thank you very much
Thanks! It`s work
OW, its not working with me..
Worked, thank goodness 🙂
I followed the exact steps for 8 GB Toshiba pen drive, which is showing 4 MB as it’s capacity but it didn’t work…
My Kingston 8GB drive was appearing as 2.35MB in Windows… Bootice recognized the correct capacity right at startup, did all steps just like the guide told and all went just as expected, got my 8GB flash drive back.
where the hell is the executable…It this site playing some kinda of game…I only want the BootIce executable…
Link for the BootIce is given at the end of the post. From the link you can download all the versions of BootIce.
if u are using the usb for general use,then use a anti autorun program .
it will put a filefolder on the usb to stop any autorun virus
regrun is a good program that has a utility to protect all drives from autorun virus,
remember to unplug and reinsert the usb stick afterwards.
sometimes the new size won’t show .until you do this.
Used bootlice procedure to restore kingston 8gb data travel (usb2.0) used for recording tv . After using procedure it reads used 0 Reserved 5040mb Free 2393mb which would record about 30 mins prog. I hoped procedure would reduce mb devoted to memory. Patrick
I bought one Toshiba flash drive that was formatted in exFat system. I couldn’t format it to NTFS; both in Windows (from the Windows Explorer) and in Ubuntu (with GParted). In Windows it said that it was unable to format it; in Ubuntu it did format it, but then it failed. Until I downloaded this magnificent tool and were finally able to format it in only a few seconds with NTFS file system.
I guess that the only thing I want to say, even though he might not be reading this, is thank you; both to this article and (specially) to Pauly, because this free software solved my problems.