External HD wrong capacity from day one (Windows XP)

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Mambo Jambo

Commendable
Mar 24, 2016
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1,510
Dear all,

I have an IOmega prestige 1TB which from the first day on windows XP shows as a 750GB drive. I would like now to gain the hidden capacity of the disk. It seems this is something to do with geometry of the disk. I have installed TestDisk from CGSecurity.org, but I do not know exactly what parameters to enter. Can anyone give me any clues?
 
Solution
D_Know_WD
Well, there is a chance that the drive is failing. So, the best thing you can do is to just back up the important data stored on it.
After that, you can test it with some of these and see what is wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Regarding the capacity issue, I would say that it is really strange. One thing you can do is to go to BIOS and see how is the drive recognized over there. Over there, you should see the right capacity of the drive. The testing tools should show the capacity of the drive as well.

D_Know_WD
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
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Hi there Mambo Jambo,

You need to go to Disk Management just as Someone Somewhere suggested. Here's how: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=3fy6Oy
Over there, you should see some unallocated space(black bar). You can either extend your current partition or create a new one out of the unallocated space.

Keep in mind that it is always a good idea to back up the data stored on the drive before dealing with partition management.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
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M

Mambo Jambo

Commendable
Mar 24, 2016
3
0
1,510
Hi guys,

Thanks for answering. I don't have the drive here with me right now., so I can't post a screenshot from diskmgmt, but I did that, and there is no region of non-allocated space.

I remember that when I bought this drive, 5 years ago or so, I was a bit upset because I bought it with the expectation of having 1 TB, but windows XP (probably a 32-bit version) told me it was not able to make full use of the space and it would have to slice it down to 750 GB (as far as I recall). I said: "F#ck it! I deal with this later!" and allowed windows to cut my drive short from its full capacity. In the mean time, I had problems with this drive, sectors got corrupted, had problems in reading files, used scandisk plenty of times, but at some point the drive was so full that whatever recovery tools I was using the drive would just get stuck (I presume, due to the lack of free space to copy data). I had no option (with my knowledge) other than to unplug the whole thing, and then it became even worst, windows would not even recognize the damn thing. So, I turned to TestDisk that could see the drive, would indicate it would write a new partition to it, but upon restarting the drive windows continued on not detecting it. I used Diskmgmt to make a new partition table, using MBR (like TestDisk offers) it would give me some sort of cyclic error. However, using GPT I could finally see the drive being detected by Windows (10), and the 750 GB that it had. Now, am I still convinced that I have a 1 TB drive, not a 750 GB one - am I dreaming?

Sorry for the long story.. Simply wanted to say that I did a lot of crap onto this drive, it may suffer from some of my own errors in handling the repercussions of which might still be manifesting. If there is a way to ascertain the real capacity of this drive, please let me know. If diskmgmt is fully capable of doing that, then I am indeed dreaming.
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
Well, there is a chance that the drive is failing. So, the best thing you can do is to just back up the important data stored on it.
After that, you can test it with some of these and see what is wrong with it: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Regarding the capacity issue, I would say that it is really strange. One thing you can do is to go to BIOS and see how is the drive recognized over there. Over there, you should see the right capacity of the drive. The testing tools should show the capacity of the drive as well.

D_Know_WD
 
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Solution
M

Mambo Jambo

Commendable
Mar 24, 2016
3
0
1,510
Thank you D_Know_WD! I checked the BIOS as suggested, for some reason it did not recognized it immediately, even though it was able to recognize a small USB thumb drive. However after fiddling a bit with the boot order I could see it and indeed it is 750 GB, and I was mistaken in thinking it was a larger drive. Why I thought that, could be a question to post in another forum, probably on a Psychiatry related one. Thanks for your time!

Cheers!
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

Judicious
Jul 30, 2014
6,633
3
35,960
As this is an old drive and you've experienced some problems with it, my suggestion would be not to keep crucial data stored on it.
With some of the tools already provided, you can test it and observe the SMART report.
Look for pending/reallocated/uncorrectable sectors.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD :)
 
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