My hdd is a 2TB drive, Yet instead of showing as 1.8 TB it shows more than its capacity. Showing up as 2.5tb. How ?

[stonehedge99]

My 2TB hdd capacity shows different outrageously wrong values as available free space and used space when i right click > properties.

Sometimes it shows 2.5TB as hdd capacity. All this while actually inside it are 3 large back up Macrium image files. These files total 1.3 TB when i select them together and right click > properties. So actually windows properties should only show 500GB as available capacity.

This has been happening for the past 1 week or so. Each time i reboot it shows a different value. This mornings special is 1.8TB (which is true) but available capacity is 1.2TB. In an effort to troubleshoot this i have even deep 0 level fill formatted the drive and then recreated the backup images of my data drive onto this HDD, but after 2 days its back to its tantrums. I fired up Macrium and tried seeing file system properties for the drive and its says "MFT Corrupt Run Chkdsk /r"

Any solutions as to what i should do, or is it a sign that my HDD is going to die ? Other than this the disk functions as normal and is fast in its data throughput etc.

My OS is WIN XP PRO SP3.
Motherboard INTEL DG33 FB.
INTEL CORE 2 DUO Processor.

Thanks

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, stonehedge99.

Well I'd start with the suggestion about chkdsk if I were you. Open up CMD (Command Prompt) as administrator and type chkdsk X: /r, where "X" is the letter of the drive you wish to check, so don't forget to change it with the appropriate one. Other than that, I'd download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and test the drive for errors and bad sectors, to see if anything out of the ordinary pops-up. You could also give it a try with a different computer, or at least with a different SATA port and different cables on yours.

Please let me know how everything goes.
Boogieman_WD

 

[stonehedge99]

Hi Boogieman,

I did actually run the chkdsk and the process 1-3 ran fast and at step 4 was really really stalling. I was about to try to cancel that after it took about 3 hours but then noticed it was moving along albeit slow. Then step 5 took another 2 hours. I guess all this is because its 2TB in size. Finally i was relieved to see it finish and very glad that the situation now seems to have righted itself. It is now showing free capacity as 520gb and occupied capacity as 1.31 TB. I hope this doesn't recur.

Now that the disk is OK/rectified, does this incident mean my disk is not as good as a proper one ought to be ? If its only a software based file table thing and its now rewritten it properly then its ok. But does this incident weaken the disk inviting further fails ?

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Nah, this shouldn't have had any negative on the drive itself (assuming that it was in a good condition). This has to do with its partition and the file table, which should be OK not that it's fixed.
However a problematic drive may lead to such issues, so I'd recommend that you test the drive with a diagnostic tool anyway, just to make sure that everything is fine.