Question Strange storage issues on upgrade

May 5, 2019
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So I upgraded a perfectly working 5yr old office machine. The biggest issue I had with the upgrade was downloading the windows creation tool.
Tried 2 flash drives and 2 different memory cards to download it, they all failed at the end. So in desperation I pulled out an old western digital 320gb hdd and plugged it into a usb dock and that worked. Couldn't tell you why none of the flash drives or memory cards would work, they were all over the 8GB needed.
Anyways, was able to do the upgrade and install windows. Problem now is the 320gb hdd shows up as a 32gb hdd. Also all the flash drives or memory cards I attempted to install the windows creation tool on I can no longer access. When I click on the drive (all of them) in Windows a box comes up asking me if I want to format the drive, no matter which one, and I cannot access the data on them. Any ideas?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Upgraded from what to what?

The 320GB drive now showing as 32GB might indicate that you used this to create a Win 10(?) install.
Correct?

If there was any data on that drive, it is generally gone.
There may be some recovery actions, but probably not in exact 100% condition as it was earlier.


Disregard the other flash drives and cards for now.
 
May 5, 2019
19
0
10
Upgraded from what to what?

The 320GB drive now showing as 32GB might indicate that you used this to create a Win 10(?) install.
Correct?

If there was any data on that drive, it is generally gone.
There may be some recovery actions, but probably not in exact 100% condition as it was earlier.


Disregard the other flash drives and cards for now.


Correct, I used it to download the Win10 creation tool. I wasn't worried about the data, I copied it to another drive just to be safe before I started, thank goodness.

But how to get it back to a 320gb drive, it shows as a 32gb drive.

The flash drives and cards don't have much I really need on them, but I can't even access them at all, soon as I click on it a box comes up asking me if I want to format it.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Correct, I used it to download the Win10 creation tool. I wasn't worried about the data, I copied it to another drive just to be safe before I started, thank goodness.

But how to get it back to a 320gb drive, it shows as a 32gb drive.

The flash drives and cards don't have much I really need on them, but I can't even access them at all, soon as I click on it a box comes up asking me if I want to format it.
The diskpart commandline function with the clean command will kill everything on that drive, and let you reformat it to NTFS or similar. Restoring it to 320GB.
Currently, it is FAT32, wich results in a 32GB volume size.


Be very careful when you do this, and be absolutely sure of which drive you are accessing.
 
May 5, 2019
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DMDE will show you the full capacity of the physical drive and a list of partitions (volumes) with their file systems, if present.

Yeah this is greek to me but I ran the DMDE and it shows "Drive 1 MBR 320gb usb" under that Microsoft "unknown" 16.8mb then it drops down to "ESD-USB (primary A) Fat 32 34.3gb" under that is $volume02 NTFS 320gb and under that is unalocated 286gb.

I have no idea what any of that means. Keep in mind the drive in question is attached via usb dock.
 
May 5, 2019
19
0
10
The diskpart commandline function with the clean command will kill everything on that drive, and let you reformat it to NTFS or similar. Restoring it to 320GB.
Currently, it is FAT32, wich results in a 32GB volume size.


Be very careful when you do this, and be absolutely sure of which drive you are accessing.

I don't know how to do that. Maybe you can tell me an easy way to do this.

Upgraded from a AM1 25w Athlon 2.05 quad with graphics to a Ryzen 2400G, new mobo, new ram, new PSU.
 
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May 5, 2019
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The link provides the exact instructions needed.
Anything else I put here would just be copy/paste from that link.

"This article explains the Microsoft Diskpart Erase utility. "

Sorry I didn't even see the link, I thought it was an ad. lol. I'll do that tomorrow when I have more time. Thanks!!
 
May 5, 2019
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Ok so those directions was horrible but once in disk management I was able to figure it out. I deleted the partition and now it shows up as 298GB or something like that and I decided to use it to do my backups. Thanks a lot for the help.

Now I'm off to try and figure out what happened to my flash drives and memory cards, it appears there is no data on them, somehow they got erased when I tried to use them to download the Windows creation tool, why I have no idea. Even stranger I cannot even open them, soon as I click them it say's I have to format to continue, so I'm doing that now to the ones I KNOW had no data on them, then I'll see if I can use them at all. The other one (memory card) I had a bunch of camera photos on, it's showing up as 14.84gb RAW healthy primary partition. When I click properties it shows 0 used space and 0 free space, like it's not even there. If I try to open it or do a file check on it, it tells me it has to be formatted first. Any chance I can still get the data off it somehow?
 
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Ok so those directions was horrible but once in disk management I was able to figure it out. I deleted the partition and now it shows up as 298GB or something like that and I decided to use it to do my backups. Thanks a lot for the help.

Now I'm off to try and figure out what happened to my flash drives and memory cards, it appears there is no data on them, somehow they got erased when I tried to use them to download the Windows creation tool, why I have no idea. Even stranger I cannot even open them, soon as I click them it say's I have to format to continue, so I'm doing that now to the ones I KNOW had no data on them, then I'll see if I can use them at all. The other one (memory card) I had a bunch of camera photos on, it's showing up as 14.84gb RAW healthy primary partition. When I click properties it shows 0 used space and 0 free space, like it's not even there. If I try to open it or do a file check on it, it tells me it has to be formatted first. Any chance I can still get the data off it somehow?

When you use the tools to create the Windows boot media, it does not just download the files, it actually formats the disk and then creates the installer for Windows on it. So if those failed at some point, they disks can easily be wiped, but they should still be usable in the same way as the hard drive. You need to clear anything off them, create a new partition and format that partition. The diskpart utility is great for that, although I only use it to clear the space and use Windows to create and format a new partition.
 
May 5, 2019
19
0
10
When you use the tools to create the Windows boot media, it does not just download the files, it actually formats the disk and then creates the installer for Windows on it. So if those failed at some point, they disks can easily be wiped, but they should still be usable in the same way as the hard drive. You need to clear anything off them, create a new partition and format that partition. The diskpart utility is great for that, although I only use it to clear the space and use Windows to create and format a new partition.

But if your downloading software onto a flash drive or memory card, wouldn't it tell you that it's going to format the drive first? I don't recall it doing that.
Secondly, it did NOT format the hdd that I ended up using to download the tool, all the old files were still on it.
I'm quite upset that it deleted the data on my memory card, I just can't imagine that downloading a file on it would wipe all the other data off it and not even tell me. That's baffling.
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
But if your downloading software onto a flash drive or memory card, wouldn't it tell you that it's going to format the drive first? I don't recall it doing that.
Secondly, it did NOT format the hdd that I ended up using to download the tool, all the old files were still on it.
I'm quite upset that it deleted the data on my memory card, I just can't imagine that downloading a file on it would wipe all the other data off it and not even tell me. That's baffling.
If you create the Win 10 install media on a flash drive (or any drive, actually), it absolutely warns you, at least twice.

Once on the MS website where you download the MediaCreation tool, and when you actually tell it what flash drive to use.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
"A blank USB flash drive with at least 8GB of space or blank DVD (and DVD burner) if you want to create media. We recommend using a blank USB or blank DVD, because any content on it will be deleted. "


During the actual creation, before you hit the Next button:
63SwYzq.png
 
But if your downloading software onto a flash drive or memory card, wouldn't it tell you that it's going to format the drive first? I don't recall it doing that.
Secondly, it did NOT format the hdd that I ended up using to download the tool, all the old files were still on it.
I'm quite upset that it deleted the data on my memory card, I just can't imagine that downloading a file on it would wipe all the other data off it and not even tell me. That's baffling.

You said it turned into a smaller drive after you used it for the Win 10 setup, are you saying even though it was 1/10th the size it did not remove any of your files? From what you did there should not have been any files left on it. You used the tool, it would have formatted the drive and created a new partition on it, then you manually deleted that partition and created a new larger one. Both of those actions would have deleted any files on the drive.
 
May 5, 2019
19
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10
You said it turned into a smaller drive after you used it for the Win 10 setup, are you saying even though it was 1/10th the size it did not remove any of your files? From what you did there should not have been any files left on it. You used the tool, it would have formatted the drive and created a new partition on it, then you manually deleted that partition and created a new larger one. Both of those actions would have deleted any files on the drive.

Correct, it showed as 32GB but all my files were still there in that 32GB.
 
May 5, 2019
19
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10
If you create the Win 10 install media on a flash drive (or any drive, actually), it absolutely warns you, at least twice.

Once on the MS website where you download the MediaCreation tool, and when you actually tell it what flash drive to use.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
"A blank USB flash drive with at least 8GB of space or blank DVD (and DVD burner) if you want to create media. We recommend using a blank USB or blank DVD, because any content on it will be deleted. "


During the actual creation, before you hit the Next button:
63SwYzq.png

I never saw that, either warning. Thanks for pointing it out.
 
May 5, 2019
19
0
10
When you use the tools to create the Windows boot media, it does not just download the files, it actually formats the disk and then creates the installer for Windows on it. So if those failed at some point, they disks can easily be wiped, but they should still be usable in the same way as the hard drive. You need to clear anything off them, create a new partition and format that partition. The diskpart utility is great for that, although I only use it to clear the space and use Windows to create and format a new partition.

Ok thanks for that. I'm able to use both memory cards now. However while my camera sees the 16gb card, it say's "no memory card" when I insert the 8gb card. I have no idea why but whatever, I'll just keep the 16gb card in the camera.