They probably changed the partition table to say that the partition is 8GB. No complex firmware shenanigans needed. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_b

They probably changed the partition table to say that the partition is 8GB. No complex firmware shenanigans needed. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record. Tools like fdisk will allow you to “hack” it in 10 seconds. When you reparationed your OS probably read the true disk size (correctly reported by firmware) and made a brand new partition table, partition and file system on top of it.