320GB HD is now 32GB!

A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.

Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.

In Device Manager, can you see any proof it is 320GB ?
Does it have the part number of such a drive showing ?

Are you, perhaps, looking at a Flash Stick which is
plugged into the back of the machine. And there are
actually *two* drives involved here ?

Yes, you can use HPA (Host Protected Area), to make
disk capacity "disappear". But that doesn't just happen
out of the blue. That takes planning.

Even having a look in Disk Management would be a start.

Paul

Paul wrote on 5/21/2017 3:40 PM:
Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.

In Device Manager, can you see any proof it is 320GB ?

Before he did the recovery thing, it was a 320GB Seagate drive.

Does it have the part number of such a drive showing ?

??

Are you, perhaps, looking at a Flash Stick which is
plugged into the back of the machine. And there are
actually *two* drives involved here ?

No. There's just this drive plugged in to a USB port.

Yes, you can use HPA (Host Protected Area), to make
disk capacity "disappear". But that doesn't just happen
out of the blue. That takes planning.

I don't want it to disappear. I want to restore the HD to what it was
before my friend tried to make it into a Recovery drive.

Are you saying that the act of trying to make a Recovery drive created a
HPA?

Even having a look in Disk Management would be a start.

What do I look for?

On 05/21/2017 02:19 PM, Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.




Formatting the drive will not do anything

you need to go into disk management and delete the entire drive, then
recreate

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 4:30 PM:
On 05/21/2017 02:19 PM, Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.




Formatting the drive will not do anything

you need to go into disk management and delete the entire drive, then
recreate


Would that be "delete volume"? If so, how do I recreate?

On 05/21/2017 03:34 PM, Alek wrote:
philo wrote on 5/21/2017 4:30 PM:
On 05/21/2017 02:19 PM, Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.




Formatting the drive will not do anything

you need to go into disk management and delete the entire drive, then
recreate


Would that be "delete volume"? If so, how do I recreate?




Just use disk management, once it's deleted, you can create a new
partition from all of the free space, which should be the original 320 gigs

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 6:19 PM:
On 05/21/2017 03:34 PM, Alek wrote:
philo wrote on 5/21/2017 4:30 PM:
On 05/21/2017 02:19 PM, Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.

Formatting the drive will not do anything

you need to go into disk management and delete the entire drive, then
recreate

Would that be "delete volume"? If so, how do I recreate?

Just use disk management, once it's deleted,

"It" is what, the volume as in "delete volume"?

you can create a new
partition from all of the free space, which should be the original 320 gigs

Thanks.

On 05/21/2017 05:29 PM, Alek wrote:
philo wrote on 5/21/2017 6:19 PM:
On 05/21/2017 03:34 PM, Alek wrote:
philo wrote on 5/21/2017 4:30 PM:
On 05/21/2017 02:19 PM, Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.

Formatting the drive will not do anything

you need to go into disk management and delete the entire drive, then
recreate

Would that be "delete volume"? If so, how do I recreate?

Just use disk management, once it's deleted,

"It" is what, the volume as in "delete volume"?


Yes

you can create a new
partition from all of the free space, which should be the original 320 gigs

Thanks.

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 6:47 PM:
On 05/21/2017 05:29 PM, Alek wrote:
philo wrote on 5/21/2017 6:19 PM:
On 05/21/2017 03:34 PM, Alek wrote:
philo wrote on 5/21/2017 4:30 PM:
On 05/21/2017 02:19 PM, Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.

Formatting the drive will not do anything

you need to go into disk management and delete the entire drive, then
recreate

Would that be "delete volume"? If so, how do I recreate?

Just use disk management, once it's deleted,

"It" is what, the volume as in "delete volume"?


Yes

Thank you!

O "delete volume"?


Yes

Thank you!


Sure, hope all is ok now

philo wrote on 5/21/2017 7:27 PM:
O "delete volume"?


Yes

Thank you!


Sure, hope all is ok now


Yes, thanks. Funny thing: when I made a new volume, it was only 300GB,
rather than 320.

Alek wrote:
philo wrote on 5/21/2017 7:27 PM:
O "delete volume"?

Yes
Thank you!

Sure, hope all is ok now


Yes, thanks. Funny thing: when I made a new volume, it was only 300GB,
rather than 320.

320,000,000,000 / (1024*1024*1024) = 298.02

And the exact number down to the last byte they use for the size,
may be related to CHS, even though CHS is not really used
in any physical way. Maybe the number is divisible by 63 ?
So it can't actually be the number 320,000,000,000.
It'll be some goofy number.

The drive manufacturer "throws away" some capacity on
the end, to make the drive "precisely" just a little
bit bigger than the design number.

This is a result of some lawsuit long ago, where customers
complained they were being ripped off. So the units
of measure (at the disk drive company) are "nice
round billions", while the units the computer interfaces
use, are measured in Power-Of-Two units.

*******

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte

"Hard drive and SSD manufacturers use "GB" to mean 1000000000 bytes.

So, the capacity of a "128 GB" SSD will be 128000000000 bytes.

Expressed in GiB this would be
about 119.2 GiB (128000000000 divided by 1073741824).
"

The screen of your computer, may not be using the right
unit of measure or abbreviation, when you expect it.

The same sort of monkey business happened with
TV screen dimensions (diagonal) and what was "legal"
got defined there too. Companies are mortally afraid
of getting that one wrong again. Like at one time,
maybe they measured the diagonal including the cabinet
dimension, and a 23" device might only have an
actual 20" screen (diagonal). Just the screen part
should be measured now.

Paul

On 22/5/2017 3:19 AM, Alek wrote:
He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!
I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.
Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

You have to destroy the partition table on it. Do your friend now how to
use Linux's dd? It's a free tool.

Did you friend use USB SATA bridge to connect the 320G drive to the WIn
10 PC?



--
@~@ Remain silent! Drink, Blink, Stretch! Live long and prosper!!
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
^ ^ (x86_64 Ubuntu 9.10) Linux 2.6.39.3
�借貸! ��騙! ��交! �打交! �打劫! �自殺! 請考慮綜� (CSSA):
http://www.swd.gov.hk/tc/index/site_...sub_addressesa

Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.


Does your friend have a 32GB C partition on the internal drive? And did
he "clone" it rather than "image" it?
Tell him to use the latter next time. Cloning does to a drive exactly
what appears to have happened.

Ed

Ed Cryer wrote on 5/22/2017 7:05 AM:
Alek wrote:
A friend of mine decided to make a recovery drive with a 320GB HD he had
laying around.

When he told me about that, I suggested that he was wasting a good HD
and he should get an 8GB flash drive to use as a recovery drive.

He then told me that File Explorer said that the HD had a capacity of
32GB, not 320 GB!

I told him to format the drive and he did, but that didn't change anything.

Have the partitions gotten screwed up? How do I get back to a single
approx 320GB partition?

Thanks.


Does your friend have a 32GB C partition on the internal drive? And did
he "clone" it rather than "image" it?

No idea. Neither. He ran Win10's recovery thing.

Tell him to use the latter next time. Cloning does to a drive exactly
what appears to have happened.

Are you suggesting that cloning would be better than using Recovery?