Hard drive size vs. volume capacity huge difference (multiple hundred GBs)...

[dysgrammatophobia]

So I just switched to a larger hard drive. I had a 200 GB one but it was getting full so I got a 500 GB one and used the Roxio Back on Track 3 Suite Disaster Recovery I had on an external hard drive to get all my data and my operating system onto my new hard drive. The thing is, while the size of my new hard drive is 500 GB (effectively 465.6 GB), the volume capacity is the same as my old hard drive (179.6 GB), which makes the extra 300 GB on my new hard drive completely useless. Does anyone know how to get my volume capacity to the 465.6 GB it should be?

 

[sminlal]

If you cloned the old drive to the new one then you've cloned the original 200GB partition and likely have 300GB of unpartitioned space.

Assuming you're using Windows, go to Disk Management (Start -> right-click "Computer" & select "Manage" -> click "Disk Management" in the left pane) and look at the map of your drive in the LOWER part of the right pane.

If the partition doesn't use up the entire drive then you should be able to extend the partition in Disk Management.

 

[Jonmor68]

There's a good chance that the cloning has actually made the drive capacity the same as the original and it will show as a 200 GB in Disk Managment as well.
In that case you will need a tool to restore the drive to it's full capacity, HDD Capacity Restore is a free download.
http://www.download25.com/install/hdd-capacity-restore.html

 

[cjl]

There's a good chance that the cloning has actually made the drive capacity the same as the original and it will show as a 200 GB in Disk Managment as well.
In that case you will need a tool to restore the drive to it's full capacity, HDD Capacity Restore is a free download.
http://www.download25.com/install/hdd-capacity-restore.html

Or you could just go into disk management (or diskpart if you like command line). The drive capacity hasn't shrunk, it's just that only part of it is partitioned.