My 500Gb external hard drive shows only 232 GB on Disk Managment and on my Mac Disk Utility. I lost one partition after format

xray-wmn

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I have a 500 GB external hard Drive, I had it partitioned into 2 partitions one in FAT and one in Journaled (for the my Mac computer). I back-up my information to a new external hard drive and formatted my old one. But after formatting the old one it seams to only have format one of the partitions and now I cant get the full 500GB on a PC or my MAC. Please Help
 
Welcome to the community & Happy New Year, xray-wmn!

I'd suggest you to try reformatting the drive through Disk Management in Windows. If that doesn't help, you can try using the Command Line Prompt there (run as administrator) and use the DiskPart commands to completely wipe the external HDD. However, you should keep in mind that this would erase all the data stored on it, so make sure you have a backup and there's nothing important there. Here's a tutorial that can help you with this kind of formatting: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

Another possibility would be to write zeros using a third-party formatting tool, which would again erase everything and get the HDD back to its default unformatted state.

Give it a try and let me know it goes! Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD
 

xray-wmn

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Hi Super_Soph_WD thanks a lot for you suggestions. So by now let me tell you what I have tried.

I did the *Clean ALL* Diskpart Command, and its still 232GB.

Previously after browsing and reading some blogs I downloaded:
EaseUS Partition Master 10.8
HDD Capacity Restore
AOEMI Partition Assistant Standard Edition 6.0
DTI Surface Scanner

It might be that I didnt not know how to use them, but all of them only found 232GB.

Could you help me letting with a link or explaining how "to write zeros using a third-party formatting tool". Please.
 
Hey there again, xray-wmn!

The only thing that I can suggest you is our WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostic tool for Windows. It can help you determine the health and SMART status of the drive by running the quick and extended tests, and let you know if there are any bad sectors or other SMART attributes that you should be concerned about.
However, it also has the feature of WRITING ZEROS (a.ka. low-level format). Doing the full erase will get the HDD back to how it was when you bought it, which means: NO DATA and NO FORMAT. Afterwards, you'd still need to re-initialize it and format it in order to be able to use it.
Here is a link to the WD software: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=rNcFt5
Here's the tutorial on how to perform the low-level formatting with it: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=lAEn9l

Once this is completed, you can use these two links to initialize & format:
How to initialize a drive: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=VLoLN9
How to partition & format an HDD: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=nz1A3A

Hope this helps you. Keep me posted! :)
SuperSoph_WD
 

xray-wmn

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Hi SuperSoph_WD,

So i did the Data LifeGuard Diagnostic tool WRITING ZEROS with all the instructions you kindly provided. Its still 232Gb. :(
I know you said at the moment that you don´t have any other suggestions. I you can think of something else let me know. Do you now think my HD is completely ruined? Only after a format?
 
This seems pretty unfortunate, xray-wmn! :( Since neither Windows nor Mac OS recognize it with its correct size, I'd suggest you to try creating a Ubuntu Live CD and boot into it to troubleshoot that stubborn external HDD. Here's a thread you can refer to for assistance.

I'm not sure if you've tried that already, but you can also use Windows' Command Prompt (Run as Administrator) and the DiskPart commands to reformat the HDD again and check if that will get it back to its default state.

As a last resort, I'd recommend you to get in touch with the HDD manufacturer's customer support and ask them for assistance. Hopefully, they'd have an idea on how to get to the bottom of this.

Best of luck!
SuperSoph_WD
 

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