Rebel XT - went to menu; format. New 16gb CF is now 8gb. Please help

Hello everyone, I've been kind of a lurker here on POTN, reading and learning about photography, until I couldn't find some information and needed to ask for some help. Sorry for the unusual thread title, but I figured that I should put as much information about the thread as I could in the least amount of characters as I could...

So what happened was I put a newly bought (from Amazon.com with free "super-saver shipping" - I didn't buy from eBay) 16gb SanDisk Extreme compact flash (60mb/s) into my Canon Rebel XT. The XT was already updated to the latest firmware version. When I turned the camera on, the CF read/write lamp went on for longer than usual, as if the camera was formatting the new card automatically. When it was done, I could read that 999 raw+jpeg shots were remaining. I went to the menu and went the the formatting screen. Before I selected "OK", I read that the camera recognized that I had 16gb (well, not exactly "16". More like 14 point something) of free space. When I selected "OK", the camera took some time to format the card, and then when it was done, I only had less than 700 raw+jpeg shots left. I went to the menu, then went to the formatting screen again to see how much free space was available. This time, the camera only recognizes that I have 8gb of free space available.

How do I undo what I've just done, and make everything as if I've just received the unopened package from Amazon and have done nothing to the card? And in the case that I can undo what I've done, which method should I use from then on to reformat the card each time I transfer photos? I know that reformatting the CF in the camera again would make it go back to 8gb, taking me back to where I am now, in the first place, so that would not be an option. I also assume that reformatting the card after every time I transfer photos is a must, in order to preserve the card's life.

Thanks for your time,
Vincent

can you try to format it on the pc?

Reformatting it on a PC should return it to the full 16GB. I'd hazard a guess that the old XT can't handle cards above a certain size (8GB?), so defaults anything larger to that size.

Pennington wrote in post #10369180
Reformatting it on a PC should return it to the full 16GB. I'd hazard a guess that the old XT can't handle cards above a certain size (8GB?), so defaults anything larger to that size.

ding ding ding ding ding

We have a winner
The older model cameras can't see the larger, newer cards
Format it on your PC and put it aside ...

IIRC there's a utility from HP that'll let you recapture the missing 8 GB. Just "reformatting" doesn't typically do the job.