Question 2tb drive says only 460gb available after a format...

_dawn_chorus_

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I used Macrum Reflect yesterday to clone a drive, I put it on a blank 2 tb external hdd, now that Im done with it I formatted the drive. Thing is, after the format the drive says its only 460gb...what just happened??
 

electro_neanderthal

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That sounds like either the drive is dying, or perhaps there's a partition that's 460GB large. Did you delete all the partitions when reformatting the hard drive? Or did some weird thing happen and Macrum Reflect partition the hard drive for whatever reason (assuming there was only one partition to start with)?
 

electro_neanderthal

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Yeah disk 3, I formated it just from the file explorer window and it said it was only 460gb in properties and would let me transfer anything larger onto it.
Now it is not giving me an option format is from disk management
In Disk 3, you have two large partitions: one is Blade (the 460GB that was read) and another 1386GB that's unallocated (which Windows wont read outside of Disk Management). If you want a single large partition then you'll need to delete the Blade partition, which should give you a total unallocated space of around 1840-1850GB, then format the unallocated space as NTFS or FAT32 (for older versions of windows). Otherwise, just format the unallocated space and give it a new drive letter name.

If you're having trouble getting the drive to format from the right click menu, then you may want to check the properties and go to the security tab to see if you have permission to modify it.
 
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_dawn_chorus_

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In Disk 3, you have two large partitions: one is Blade (the 460GB that was read) and another 1386GB that's unallocated (which Windows wont read outside of Disk Management). If you want a single large partition then you'll need to delete the Blade partition, which should give you a total unallocated space of around 1840-1850GB, then format the unallocated space as NTFS or FAT32 (for older versions of windows). Otherwise, just format the unallocated space and give it a new drive letter name.

If you're having trouble getting the drive to format from the right click menu, then you may want to check the properties and go to the security tab to see if you have permission to modify it.

There is no security tab to select
 
If disk #3 has an MBR partitioning system, then 4 partitions is the limit. To retain the MBR partitioning, one could move the WinRe partition to the end of the drive and then expand the Blade partition.

I don't know if it would be safe to convert to GPT partitioning with live data, but that's another option.
 

USAFRet

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Is there any data on that Disk 3 you wish to keep?
It appears not...the E partition is 100% free.

If that is the case, DELETE all existing partitions, reformat it as GPT, and create one new volume of the whole 2TB space.
Give it the drive letter E.
 

_dawn_chorus_

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If disk #3 has an MBR partitioning system, then 4 partitions is the limit. To retain the MBR partitioning, one could move the WinRe partition to the end of the drive and then expand the Blade partition.

I don't know if it would be safe to convert to GPT partitioning with live data, but that's another option.

I just want to nuke the damn thing. . its letting me do nothing. I formated it
Is there any data on that Disk 3 you wish to keep?
It appears not...the E partition is 100% free.

If that is the case, DELETE all existing partitions, reformat it as GPT, and create one new volume of the whole 2TB space.
Give it the drive letter E.


I want to nuke it. After I deleted all the partitions it would let me, (all except Winre and another unamed 100mb partition) then it disappeared from file explorer and now it only shows up in Disk Management and wont un-grey the Format option.
 

_dawn_chorus_

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I just want to nuke the damn thing. . its letting me do nothing. I formated it



I want to nuke it. After I deleted all the partitions it would let me, (all except Winre and another unamed 100mb partition) then it disappeared from file explorer and now it only shows up in Disk Management and wont un-grey the Format option.

So now I am trying to format it from command prompt but the drive has no letter assigned so I cannot find it.
 

electro_neanderthal

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Well, if everything is grayed out, there are two things I can think of: Use the Windows Install media (disk or USB) and get to the part where you select where you want to install Windows. Once at the part where you select where you want to install Windows, you should be able to choose your 2TB drive and wipe the entire HDD of all its partitions (or delete every partition in said drive separately). Then you should be able to format it (either by a format option in the install process, or by canceling the install and using Disk Management once you boot into Windows normally). The other way is to connect it to a Linux OS (like Ubuntu) and format it there.
 

_dawn_chorus_

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I figured it out!! Well, I followed the steps in this youtube video which explained how to fix it.
"Completely format hard drive removing all partitions (including OEM)"
-Aron Alliston

It just had me from the command prompt :
-diskpart

-list disk

Select the disk

-clean

Took about 2 seconds to clean then I was able to do the rest in disk manager.


If a moderator wants to repost or re explain this information I can select it as best answer, for any poor soul down the line who finds themselves with this issue.