External Hard drive Capacity became small and all files are missing

[drunkenstoopid]

Hello,
I have a problem with my 500GB external drive. I tried to recover my Windows 8 on my Acer Aspire V5 using Acer recovery Management. Before recovering it to factory setting, I backed up Applications to my external hard drive using 'create Drivers and Applications backup' and 'create factory default backup' on Acer recovery management. During factory default backup, I cancelled the backup and then started recovery to factory setting. After recovery I see that my external drive's capacity become 31,9GB free of 32GB capacity, and all my files in it were gone. Can anyone help me recover my data and disk space, please? Thanks.

 

[luke1078]

Do you have a Windows OS you can use? It appears that you've shrank your volume.. or disk.

 

[drunkenstoopid]

Do you have a Windows OS you can use? It appears that you've shrank your volume.. or disk.

I have solved that problem, thank you. But now I have another problem. My windows seemed to be crashed and it won't boot to windows. It just repeated the same cycle 'Acer logo screen - black screen - Found some error and restart' I tried to press Shift + F8, F12, Del, nothing worked to safe mode. My laptop doesn't have internal DVD drive so I can't boot from cd. Can you help?

 

[luke1078]

If you don't have Windows OS you can use, reboot into Windows recovery mode, start up CMD, type in "DISKPART" then type "RESCAN" then after it's been scanned type "ListDisk" or "List Disk" your drive should appear as online. Now go back to the System Recovery Options which should give you the option to use recovery tools (cmd etc) and an option to restore your computer, click on "Load Drivers" you should be able to see your hard drive and might be able to get the files off there...

If you have a Windows OS you can use, follow this...

In Windows 8, open Run from the Apps screen or see Tip #1 below for a shortcut.

In Windows 7 and Windows Vista, click on the Start button.

In Windows XP and earlier, click on Start and then Run.

Type the following command in the text box:

diskmgmt.msc

...and then hit the Enter key or press the OK button, depending on where you ran the command from.

Note: Technically, opening Disk Management from the Command Prompt would require that you actually open the Command Prompt program. However, running an executable program like diskmgmt.msc from the search or run box accomplishes the same thing.

Disk Management will open immediately.

You should be able to see 2 partitions within your drive, one might not be active and that might have your files in there, so what you want to do is follow this youtube video to see how to unshrink it and make it into one whole drive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONwxHX74svI

 

[luke1078]

Oh yeah, I am actually having the same problem, the Boot MGR (BCD) is corrupted so what we would need to do is get all the files off there, by doing the FIRST example I showed you with the RESCAN and LIST DISK etc you should be able to get your files off of there and it may freeze because it's trying to read your hard drive with a corrupted BCD BUT after a few seconds/minutes it will show up. I'm going to try and copy fresh boot files to my corrupted hard drive to see if it will fix the boot files, I'll get back to you if it works lol.

 

[luke1078]

Ohhhh I forgot to tell you to disconnect the hard drive before you boot into WindowsRE but only do this if it crashes or does not load into WindowsRE whilst having the Hard Drive connected.

 

[sateesh89]

Hi,

Can you tell me how you solved the problem regarding "External Hard drive Capacity became small and all files are missing" ?
I also did the same with my WD 1TB HDD. It is showing now as 32GB drive...I have very important data in that. Pls let me know how to recover those files.?

Thanks
Sateesh