Hard drive lost half of total allocatable capacity

[Wootloopz]

My computer is an Alienware Aurora R4 from October 2012 with an i7-3930k, a GTX 690, 16 GB RAM, a 500GB Samsung main SSD drive with Windows 8 Pro 64-bit on it, and a 4TB WD HDD storage drive.

I was trying to format my internal WD 4TB drive (Model number: WD4001FAEX) in Disk Management, and I accidentally converted it from a basic disk to a dynamic disk, which cut the total allocatable capacity in half for some reason. Then I converted the disk back to a basic disk, and it's still stuck at half capacity. And it's not that I have a partition of only half the drive capacity; the total allocatable capacity is halved, and there are no partitions on the drive.

I've tried multiple different partition managers, I've converted the disk to MBR then back to GPT, I've checked the drive for errors with the WD diagnostics program (It passed and showed its "physical storage" as 4TB and its "logical storage" as 2TB), and I've checked the BIOS and it reports the drive as having the full 4TB even though Windows doesn't recognize it.

How doeseth I get the rest of my capacity back?

I've searched the internet far and wide for solutions to this issue, but whenever I find forum threads of people asking for help with the issue, it never gets solved. There's one program called HDD Capacity Restore which seems like it might help, but it only runs on 32-bit Windows versions, and I'm on 64-bit.

 

[popatim]

delete the partition(s) and then you can convert it to GPT which is what you need to get a 4gb partition

 

[Wootloopz]

delete the partition(s) and then you can convert it to GPT which is what you need to get a 4gb partition

Did you read the post? There are no partitions and it already is GPT, and I converted it to MBR and then back to GPT to see if it would do anything and it didn't.

 

[Paperdoc]

I don't understand how you could have "converted the disk to GPT" and yet have NO Partitions on it. As I understand it, The way a HDD is structured with the GPT system is to write a GUID Partition Table to it, which I believe also creates at least one Partition. Maybe you DO have one Partition on it, and its size is specified as 2 TB? Or, maybe the conversion from MBR to GPT never happened?

 

[Wootloopz]

I don't understand how you could have "converted the disk to GPT" and yet have NO Partitions on it. As I understand it, The way a HDD is structured with the GPT system is to write a GUID Partition Table to it, which I believe also creates at least one Partition. Maybe you DO have one Partition on it, and its size is specified as 2 TB? Or, maybe the conversion from MBR to GPT never happened?

It's all unallocated space and I just did it again, converting it to MBR and then back to GPT.

 

[Paperdoc]

Well then MAYBE the tests that say 2 TB are simply recovering old (and no longer correct) data. Try actually Creating and Formatting (may be one step called Initializing) a Partition in the GPT unit. Since this will be used only for data and not to boot from (I am presuming), it does not need to be Bootable. Make it whatever size you want, up to the full HDD size. (If you planned to use only part for the first Partition and create another later, that's OK, too.) Once that first Partition is in place on the GPT unit, check again what the displays say about the whole unit. Maybe actually writing new info to the Partition Table will sort things out.

 

[popatim]

My bad, I thought you said you couldnt change to gpt...
anyways. this is sometimes fixed by switching the boot order in the bios.

 

[Wootloopz]

Well then MAYBE the tests that say 2 TB are simply recovering old (and no longer correct) data. Try actually Creating and Formatting (may be one step called Initializing) a Partition in the GPT unit. Since this will be used only for data and not to boot from (I am presuming), it does not need to be Bootable. Make it whatever size you want, up to the full HDD size. (If you planned to use only part for the first Partition and create another later, that's OK, too.) Once that first Partition is in place on the GPT unit, check again what the displays say about the whole unit. Maybe actually writing new info to the Partition Table will sort things out.

Did what you said, nothing changed.

 

[Paperdoc]

What size Partition did you create on it? The entire HDD, or a smaller one?

What does My Computer tell you the capacity of the "drive" is? What does the WD Data Lifeguard utility tell you? What about Windows Disk Management in the LOWER RIGHT pane where it shows you all details of the hardware devices?

The only thing I can suggest if your system insists that it only has a 2TB HDD to use, is to Zero-Fill the unit so there is no old data anywhere on it. Unfortunately, that could take 8 to 12 hours. THEN you should have a truly empty HDD that can be Partitioned to GPT.

However, the easiest Zero-fill utility I know to get is that WD Data Lifeguard, and I do NOT know whether it can handle a unit over 2 TB and fill it all. You could check the WD website for that detail. Alternatively, anyone know if the latest DBAN can do the full job?

 

[Wootloopz]

What size Partition did you create on it? The entire HDD, or a smaller one?

What does My Computer tell you the capacity of the "drive" is? What does the WD Data Lifeguard utility tell you? What about Windows Disk Management in the LOWER RIGHT pane where it shows you all details of the hardware devices?

The only thing I can suggest if your system insists that it only has a 2TB HDD to use, is to Zero-Fill the unit so there is no old data anywhere on it. Unfortunately, that could take 8 to 12 hours. THEN you should have a truly empty HDD that can be Partitioned to GPT.

However, the easiest Zero-fill utility I know to get is that WD Data Lifeguard, and I do NOT know whether it can handle a unit over 2 TB and fill it all. You could check the WD website for that detail. Alternatively, anyone know if the latest DBAN can do the full job?

I made a partition of the entirety of the allocatable space (1.6TB). My Computer then says the drive has 1.6TB, and Disk Managent says 1.6TB in the top and bottom panes, which are the only ones. And then, WD LifeGuard says the Physical Drive is 4001GB while the Logical Drive is 1801GB, with no free space available.

I'm gonna try to write zeros on the whole drive, but it's gonna take a while.

 

[Wootloopz]

Just finished writing zeros to the drive and it didn't help.

 

[Paperdoc]

This one really has me stumped! When you say you "made a Partition", what tool are you using for that? Disk Management? Or a third-party utility? As long as whatever tool can deal with a GPT-Partitioned drive, I do not understand how it cannot "see" the entire space.

My next suggestion is to contact WD Tech Support and ask them. Maybe even refer them to this thread for all your details.

Here's a really off-the-wall idea. Many recent Seagate HDD's have a feature in them that allows you to set the apparent max size of the unit to something less than the real max. You do this using Seagate's Seatools utility package, and it writes the new limit to some place on the HDD. From then on (until you use Seatools again to reset to true max) the drive will tell any inquiry from outside (say, Windows, or even the BIOS) that its size is only the reduced value you have set. I have NOT heard of this feature in a WD HDD unit, but MAYBE they do have something like this that I do not know about. Ask them. That MIGHT explain why the only utility you have that can actually show the true physical size as well as the (smaller) logical is one from WD.

While I'm at it, let's try for another one off-the-wall. At one point you set this unit up as a Dynamic disk using Disk Management. Now, whatever info that wrote to the HDD itself ought to have been overwritten by the Zero-Fill operation. But I'm wondering if there's a chance that your Windows Registry has an entry that says the HDD is limited to the size that a MBR-type disk can have. MAYBE setting an HDD to Dynamic somehow limits what the Registry is willing to do, to NOT a GPT-type unit?? IF that is the case, two ideas come to mind. One is to ask M$ Tech Support for their suggestion. The other is to mount this HDD unit in another machine (with a different Windows installation and Registry) that has Win 7 or Win 8 64-bit installed, and see what it has to say about this unit. From the perspective of this second machine, the 4TB HDD would be a completely new piece of hardware, and its Registry would have no previous records of it.

 

[popatim]

A few Bios's secretly write info to hidden sectors on the boot HDD which causes this. Sometimes something as simple as changing the boot order causes the bios to rewrite the info. try installing another (as in second) hdd, change the boot order so it tries to boot from the 2nd drive and reboot. (It doesn't matter if the drive is actually bootable or not.) Now power down. Power backup into the bios and change the boot order back.

If that doesnt work hdat2 is also another program you can use to readjust the drives size.

 

[PPR]

Hi!

I know this is a little bit late, but I have encountered this, too. I think that I might have a solution for you. I have the same hard drive as you do, have had it for several months. I have installed and formatted it once I had Windows 7. I then transitioned to Windows 8; at some point, the system would freeze when working with that drive. To troubleshoot, I first thought that this might be the AV driver, yet that turned not to be the case. I then attempted running the Windows disk checking tool, only to discover that it would freeze halfway through, forcing a system restart. When I erased the pertinent volumes in Disk Management, I saw that the capacity of the drive "shrunk" to about 1.6TB.

As in your case, the WD Data LifeGuard tool reported full capacity.

Long story short: Windows 8 comes with a standard SATA/ICH6R driver. Installing the proprietary Intel driver (in my case, for the P67 chipset) from the Intel website, had resolved the issue completely. It seems that the default driver does not work too well with that particular HDD.

Good luck!

 

[PPR]

It is noteworthy that in Windows 7, I already had the proprietary driver installed. Yet, Windows 8 seemed to already contain a functional driver, which is why I skipped the Intel one.

Moral of the story: try sticking to the latest, official drivers for your hardware, if possible.

 

[Paperdoc]

I like PPR's idea - incorrect driver needs update / replacement. I do not know for sure it's right, but it sure does sound right, and that would explain why the comp can't deal with the HDD properly.

 

[PPR]

Hi!

That's really all there is to it. 🙂

I even experimented: switched to the Intel driver, checked in Disk Management -- full capacity was displayed; then switched back to the default driver, restarted -- boom, 1.6TB; then again to the Intel one again -- 3.7TB.

You get the idea.

The Intel RST driver is obtainable at the following URL:

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/sftwr-prod/imsm

Better create a system restore point before installing any SATA controller drivers, just in case.