Transcend 256gb SSD (SSD370) shows capacity of 134gb

hr1975

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Some of you may have seen my earlier thread about cloning Win8.1 to my new Transcend 256gb SSD (SSD370):

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2541876/transcend-ssd-scope-clone-software.html

I finally got it done. I ended up cloning Win8.1, all my installed programs, and some of my data in C:\Users (I temporarily removed the 675gb of photos -- they are backed up on two USB 3 external hdds). I removed my 1tb HDD and installed the 256gb SSD and booted up a few minutes ago for the first time. It worked! But, when I use File Explorer to look at my new SSD drive C: it shows that it only has 134gb capacity. I looked at the properties and it shows that it has 134gb capacity, I am using 128gb, and there is 5.99gb free. Well, that's not good. This is a 256gb SSD. I hope someone can tell me what is going on. Thank you!
 

hr1975

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Okay, here is an update. I started up the task manager and clicked on the disk tab. It shows that my 256gb SSD has a capacity of 239gb and 135gb are formatted. Okay, I guess the Transcend SSD Scope software I used to do the clone only formatted 135gb. Can someone tell me how I get access to the rest? Thank you!
 

hr1975

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Thanks! I found it. Before I extend it I would like to ask another question. I see that using the Disk Management program I can extend the partition or another choice is that if I right click on the unallocated part (103.44gb) it gives the choice New Simple Volume. I suppose this will create a new partition giving it a new drive letter? I am wondering which would be better to do, extend the existing partition or creating a new partition? Please have patience with me. :) I have used Windows for many years, but I am not much experienced in the sysadmin stuff and adding new hardware.
 

giantbucket

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i left mine unallocated! i have a 128G SSD, and left the last 9G unallocated so that if i ever need to move it to another small SSD, i can (in an emergency) dump it onto a 120G if a 128G isn't handy.

i'd extend it and keep it as one partition, OS and installed apps and MyDocs and all that jazz. not much point in making yet another tiny partition. that used to be the "in" thing to do to give one the illusion of having more hard drives than we actually had.
 

hr1975

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I have now installed my old 1tb HDD into the second drive bay and booted up. File Explorer shows only the SSD C: drive and doesn't show the HDD. I check the task manager and it also only shows Disk 0 (C:). I started up Disk Management and it also only shows C: and my DVD drive E:. I apologize for all the newbie type questions. Clearly there is something I have either not done. I thought that just taking the HDD out of the primary bay, putting the SSD into the primary bay, and then putting the HDD into the secondary bay would be enough. I expected that when I booted up I would see the HDD as another drive with a new drive letter. Wrong. :)
 

giantbucket

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right-click the HDD in disk management. it'll likely complain about a conflict since that's where your old OS was from this same machine. bring it online, and start cleaning out your old OS files. you might need to format or delete some of the System Reserved partitions on on that drive. in my case, i just formatted the entire drive to be safe, but i had my backups on another drive.
 

hr1975

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I must thank you again. Here is an update. I rebooted a couple of times since my earlier post a few minutes ago and suddenly Disk Management is showing Disk 1 (the 1tb HDD) in addition to Disk 0 (the 256gb SSD). Earlier when I ran Disk Management it didn't show Disk 1. It shows Disk 1 as offline and the reason is: "The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online." You are right! :)

All of my 675gb of photos are backed up on a couple of external HDDs. Everything else has been cloned onto the SSD. So, it should be okay to format the HDD (Disk 1) old C: volume partition. This Dell laptop's 1tb HDD had C: and D: volume partitions. My understanding is that the 2gb D: partition was the Dell recovery area used for refresh or restore of Windows. Probably has hardware drivers, etc. also. I think I should leave that alone since this laptop did not come with a DVD. Before I format I just want to make sure I don't make some terrible mistake. I want to only format the old C: partition, but it is confusing. Here is a screenshot.

Disk_Management_screenshot_zpsa2b812eb.jpg
 

giantbucket

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i'd be tempted to just blow it all away. Win8.1 has enough drives built in and can download any others from the web (they'd be more up-to-date anyways). and anyways, if your machine is working fully now, there's no need for the recovery partition. it might even have Dell bloatware in it.
 

hr1975

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Here is an update. Seems like I have everything working well now. I poked around the Disk Management program right and left clicking on various things. It wouldn't allow me to format the old Disk 1 HDD since that option was grayed out. Probably because it was offline. I discovered that if I right clicked on the offline Disk 1 it gave me the option to put it online. I did that to see what would happen. At that point it was available and all seemed okay. I decided, at least for now, not to format it. I could free up some space by getting rid of Win8.1 and the programs that are on it, but I still have 120gb free so for now I will not format it. This way if I should have a problem with the SSD I can quickly go back to the HDD. I also extended the SSD Disk 0 partition to get access to all of it.

So, I have Win8.1 and all my programs on the SSD. I also put my Lightroom folder that has the catalog and previews on the SSD. The 675gb of photos are on the HDD. I started up Lightroom and pointed it to where the photos are and all seems okay. I haven't used Lightroom enough yet to see if I notice much performance difference with it, but I did do a catalog optimize operation in Lightroom last night and it was much, much faster than it was before. Also, my boot time is much faster now.

Thanks for the help!