Raspberry Pi Forums

I followed the instructions for installing the Raspbian OS onto a Sony SDHC 8GB card, using the Win32DiskImage tool and the 2012-12-16 Wheezy-Raspbian image file. After successful writing of the image, I checked the properties of the card and Windows reports that it is only 55.9MB in size, with 16.4MB used and 39.4MB free.

Is that normal? Where did the rest of the space go, and how did such a huge file (1.8GB) only take up such a small space on the drive? Or has the card been formatted to something that is not readable by Windows and the space will return once it is booted using the Pi?

this is perfectly normal. windows can only see the 1st partition which contains allt eh files required to boot the raspberry pi. once you've booted from the card the rest of the space is visible (a couple of gig )and if you run raspi-config and select the resize option you'll be able to use the whole of the sd card

Thank You!

Look here.

http://elinux.org/RPi_Noob_Guide_to_the ... e_concerns

Feel free to look at the other noob stuff on the wiki honest it won't harm, nobody will ever know you were once a RPi noob and we all were once even eupton

although... if you know linux... try out ubuntu on your pc or try a live-cd boot of g-parted...

you will gain acsess to all partitions

It's worth tying Ubuntu on your PC or even a Mac (Will it work on a Mac without anti rejection drugs? )

On Windows Ubuntu will install in a sub directory and run dual boot with the windows partition appearing as a sub directory called host. Note this is easiest under WindowsXP.

Vista and Windows7 and probablyWindows8 have issues with "Run as administrator" that you don't see under XP but it can be made to work.

Note Ubuntu is not the Only Distro for this it just happens to be one of the easiest.