If the external hard drive shows the wrong capacity, you will see less space than actual. Why your drive is not showing full capacity has many reasons. Figure out real causes by reading through this article, and find solutions to restore its full size on both Windows and Mac. The troubleshooting operation might cause data loss, so you need to download EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard for important data recovery.
- Largest Capacity External Hard Drive
- High Capacity External Hard Drives
- External Hard Drive Wrong Capacity Mac
Mostly, when a storage device is not showing the right capacity or space on Windows PC, the most proper cause of this issue is that the external hard drive driver or firmware are out of date. So, to regain the full capacity displaying on your computer, Method 1and Method 2 for updating drive driver and firmware are highly necessary.
'Why is my Seagate external HDD not showing the true capacity? I use a 4TB external hard drive to create a recovery drive and regular backups. Now with a new laptop, I decided to reformat the drive but Windows says it has only 32GB on it. What's going on with the rest free space?'
Have you ever met the situation when your external hard drive is not showing the full capacity on your Windows PC or Mac? As investigated, most hard drives of Seagate, Lacie, Western Digital or Sandisk hard drive larger than 2TB have this common problem. Yes, it common to see your 2TB hard drive shows only 500G, 200G, 127G or 32G when connected to a computer. But, a hard drive that is under 2TB also has the same problem. What's the reason? Can you reclaim the full capacity?
Why does external hard drive not show full capacity?
Most times, it's because your hard drive has been initialized to a wrong partition table. As we know, MBR partition table cannot address to the space that exceeds 2TB. That's why owners of 3TB and 4TB hard drives are likely to see less hard drive space than it should be. To solve this type of problem, you need to convert MBR to GPT.
- Check the number of the hard drive showing the wrong capacity. Type select disk + disk number and press the enter key. For instance, if you select disk 1 disk part will format disk 1. Type clean and this will clean up all files and folders on the selected hard disk.
- Actually you know what. I stil bet my 10$ on quotas. But as a Hard quota. Check File server resource Manager and expend Quota magement Quotas. If you set a hard quota on a volume there, it will display the quota size in explroer but if you open its properties and go to quota, it won't show as a quota has been enabled.
But hard drives less than 2TB is not restricted by the MBR limitation, why they still have the incorrect size information? This time you should check the hard drive errors.
Any driver and firmware issues would result in an improper recognization for Windows. Also, computer virus and hidden recovery partition are also prone to cause similar issues.
How to fix wrong capacity issues in Windows [3 fixes]
Mostly, when a storage device is not showing the right capacity or space on Windows PC, the most proper cause of this issue is that the external hard drive driver or firmware are out of date. So, to regain the full capacity displaying on your computer, Method 1and Method 2 for updating drive driver and firmware are highly necessary.
Fix 1. Convert MBR to GPT
We introduce two free-to-use methods for you: Windows Disk Management and EaseUS free partition manager. This video tutorial teaches you how to convert MBR to GPT with both tools.
NOTE: You must delete the partition first and then initialize to GPT in Windows Disk Management. EaseUS Partition Master is able to convert MBR to GPT without data loss, but it needs you to download and install in Windows 10/8.1/8/7.
Fix 2. Update external hard drive driver
Step 1. Keep your external hard drive connected to your PC, right-click on This PC/My Computer and choose Properties.
Step 2. Click 'device manager' on the left pane and expand USB Serial Bus controller.
Then you'll see a yellow exclamation mark, and right click on it and select 'Update driver' or 'Update driver software'.
Step 3. Click 'automatically search for driver software online'...
Fix 3. Update firmware of external hard drive
Step 1. Check the firmware version of your external hard drive
1. Connect your external hard drive to your PC and right-click on Windows icon and select Device Manager.
2. Select Disk Drivers, expand it, then find and right-click on your external hard drive, select Properties.
3. Click Details and then select Hardware IDs from the Properties drop-down menu.
The manufacturer and firmware version information will appear in the Value box.
Step 2. Download the firmware update of your external hard drive
1. Go to the website of your external hard drive’s manufacturer and enter the support page of the company or searching download drivers on the website.
2. Click on Support, Download or Drivers.
3. Then enter the model number of your external hard drive or hard drive in Search Knowledgebase, Search Downloads or Model / Parts ID to find the right one.
4. Check for update firmware.
If the new firmware of your drive is available, click Download, Install or Download Firmware to download and install it to a portable USB drive.
Step 3. Burn downloaded ISO and upgrade the firmware
1. Open the portable USB which saves your firmware ISO of the external hard drive and right-click on the ISO file, select Burn Disk Image.
2. Insert a writable disk or USB to your PC and select the optical drive from the Drive Burner and click Burn.
3. Restart your PC and the burned disk or USB drive, press F2, F10, F12 or Esc to bring up BIOS.
4. Select your optical or USB drive using the arrow keys and hit Enter.
5. Follow the firmware upgrade instructions and when you complete the upgrade process, you’ll get a working external hard drive with full capacity by then.
How to recover data after restoring hard drive to its full size (Windows & Mac)
If operations bring data loss issue while fixing the concerned problem, and you don't have a backup at hand, download and install EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to recover lost, deleted or formatted data on the hard drive. The software has both Windows and Mac OS X/macOS versions. Download the correct version depending on your own device.
Step 1. Choose the external hard drive
Since you're going to recover data from the external hard drive, run EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and under the External Devices tab, choose the exact drive where you lost data. Click Scan.
Step 2. Scan for lost data
The software will start immediately to scan all over the selected drive for all lost data. During the scan, you could see more and more data showing up in the results.
Step 3. Preview and recover data
After the scan is over, check the scan results for the desired data. You can preview the file by double-clicking on it. Click Recover and choose another location to save the recovered data.
My cloned hard drive shows wrong size, why?
When you upgrade to alarger hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) by cloning the old drive, youmay find the cloned hard drive has the same disk space as the original drive. In otherwords, the cloned drive not showing full capacity.
This is because when you clone a hard drive, you also cloned the partition size besides thedata. When the cloned drive is larger than the original drive, most of the cloning programs,if not all, will leave the extra space on the cloned hard drive as unallocated space. Andthen you will meet the issue that HDD/SSD shows wrong capacity.
In Windows File Explorer, you cannot see the unallocated space. That is why some users saythey have lost disk space after cloning hard drive. You can open Disk Management to see ifthere is unallocated space on your cloned hard drive.
How to fix cloned hard drive shows wrong size?
There are two workaround solutions to fix the HDD/SSD shows wrong capacity. If you havefinished cloning the hard drive, you can go to Disk Management to handle unallocated spaceafter cloning. Or if you prefer a quick fix once for all, you can perform disk clone viaprofessional cloning software that can help you clone to a larger drive without causing diskcapacity loss.
Part 1. How to use full capacity of cloned hard drive
You can add the unallocated space on the cloned hard drive to the contiguous partition withDisk Management or DiskPart.exe. Follow the steps below to expand partitions after cloningin Windows 10/8/7 using Disk Management.
1. Press Windows + R key to open the Run window. Type“diskmgmt.msc” and press Enter to open Disk Management in Windows 10/8/7.
2. In Disk Management, right-click on the partition before the unallocated space, and selectExtend Volume.
3. Follow the Extend Volume Wizard to add unallocated space to this partition.
✍ Tips:
● If the partition and the unallocated space are not contiguous, you may encounter the issue“Extend Volume greyed out”.
● Besides extending volume, you can also use the unallocated space to create one or more newpartitions. Just right-click on the unallocated space and select New SimpleVolume.
If you can neither use the unallocated space to extend the adjacent partition nor create anew partition, then your cloned hard drive is larger than 2TB and it is MBR partition style.On MBR disk, disk space beyond 2TB will become unusable.
Largest Capacity External Hard Drive
In this case, you can't use full HDD capacity after cloning unless you convert it to GPT disk. Converting a disk to GPTfrom MBR with Disk Management requires you to delete all the partitions on this hard drive.Then the time you spent on cloning hard drive is for nothing.
Or if you want a way to prevent cloned hard drive with unallocated space in the first place?Keep reading to learn more.
High Capacity External Hard Drives
Part 2. How to avoid cloned hard drive shows wrong size
The key to cloning harddrives of different sizes without leaving unallocated space is to choose proper cloningsoftware. There is specialized hard disk cloning software called AOMEI Backupper Professional that canhelp you clone hard drive to a larger one without causing disk capacity loss.
For cloning to a much larger HDD or SSD, AOMEI Backupper gives you three options tomanage the partition size. You can manually edit the partition size on the clone disk,let the program automatically adjust the partition size to fit up the entire hard drive,or clone without resizing partitions.
When cloning MBR disk toGPT disk larger than 2TB, you will not lose disk space beyond 2TB because theprogram takes care of it. The cloned hard drive can still be used as GPT disk andremains bootable.
When you upgrade to an SSD, it provides an option to align partitions to optimize forSSD. What’s more, it will not interrupt your work while cloning because of the volumeshadow copy service (VSS) technology.
★ Step-by-step guide to clone to a larger SSD without unallocated space left
AOMEI Backupper provides an intuitive interface, which makes all operations in AOMEIBackupper quite easy. To upgrade to a larger SSD, you can follow the steps below.
1. Connect the target SSD to your computer and make sure it is detected. Install this programon your computer, and open it.
✎ Note: If there areimportant data on the target SSD, do backup files before cloning, or youwill lose them.
2. Select “Disk Clone” under 'Clone' tab.
3. Click on the current drive to select it as the source disk, and click on 'Next'.Then click on the larger SSD to set it as the destination disk, and click“Next”.
4. In the Operation Summary page, click on “Edit partitions” and then choosefrom the two options below to deal with unallocated space on the cloned drive:
- Add unused space to all partitions: the program will automatically extendall existing partitions with unallocated space.
- Manually adjust partition size: you can click on each partition and dragthe side bar to edit the partition size.
External Hard Drive Wrong Capacity Mac
5. Check the option “SSD Alignment”, which is important for keeping the SSDat its best performance. Then click “Start Clone” to execute the operation.
In this way, a cloned hard drive will not show wrong size no matter how larger yourdestination disk is. Also, you still can clone HDD to smaller SSDwith the same steps above. Besides the Clone feature, AOMEI Backupper has excellent backupand restore features, so users can use it to backup operating system, and restore to thenew SSD when their computer has only one SSD slot.
Conclusion
That’s all for how to fix the cloned hard drive shows wrong size problem. You can go to DiskManagement to add unallocated space. Or you can simply perform hard drive clone with AOMEIBackupper which allows you to manage the partition size to suit your new hard drive.