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21 February 2024  Amanda J. Brook  Senior Product Manager
 

Summary
Understand and resolve your computer's failure to show your mobile hard drive's full capacity, and learn efficient data recovery techniques for disk failures.



Table of contents

table iconI. The reason why the mobile hard disk does not display the full capacity
table iconII. Use Renee Undeleter to restore data in the mobile hard disk
table iconIII. Repair method of mobile hard disk not displaying full capacity
external hard drive not showing full capacity

I. The reason why the mobile hard disk does not display the full capacity

The mobile hard disk may not display full capacity or only show the drive letter without displaying the capacity and being unable to open due to various reasons:
● The mobile hard disk is not safely ejected, resulting in hard disk failure.
● When formatting the mobile hard disk, it is interrupted due to some accidents (such as power failure).
● The hard disk has bad sectors.
● The hard disk driver is outdated. Click here to view the steps to update the hard disk driver.
● When initializing a mobile hard disk, select the MBR partition table format. This format only supports hard disks below 2TB. Larger than 2TB will not display remaining space normally.
For important data on your mobile hard disk, use professional data recovery software to scan, recover, and fix capacity display issues.

II. Use Renee Undeleter to restore data in the mobile hard disk

1. What is Renee Undeleter?

Renee Undeleter is a software designed to restore different data files. It can help retrieve lost data from accidental deletion, emptying the recycle bin, or disk/storage formatting. The software includes four modules for file recovery, format recovery, partition recovery, and image creation to address various data loss issues comprehensively.
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Easy to use Recover data by 3 steps;

Multiple scan modes Fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan;

Supported file types Image, video, audio, text, email and so on;

Image creation Create a partition image to read and back up data;

Supported devices SD card, SDHC, SDXC, USB flash drive, hard disk and computer.

Easy to use Recover data by 3 steps;

Multiple scan modes Fast partition/whole partition/whole disk scan;

Supported devices SD card/USB/hard disk.

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2. How to use Renee Undeleter to recover mobile hard disk data?

As a professional data recovery software, Renee Undeleter not only has comprehensive functions, but also has a very simple operation process. The specific operation steps are as follows:
Step 1: Connect the mobile hard disk to the computer, download and install Renee Undeleter, and select the Whole Disk Scan option on the main interface.
Note: Do not install on the disk that needs to restore data, so as not to cause data overwriting.
select whole disk scan to scan disk in renee undeleter
Data recovery function introduction:

Fast Partition Scan – Quickly retrieve files lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the recycle bin.

Whole Partition Scan – Quickly recover files lost due to inaccessible or formatted partitions.

Whole Disk Scan – Analyze and get partition information and perform a full scan of the entire partition.

Image Creation – You can create a mirror image for a partition to back up the current partition state.

Step 2: Next, select the hard disk device that needs to recover data. After the selection is complete, click (Next).
select a disk to recover in renee undeleter
Step 3: Please wait for the scan to find all partitions in the hard disk. The “Select the partition you need to scan” window will pop up, allowing you to choose a specific partition. If not selected, all partitions will be scanned automatically, resulting in more files found but a longer scanning time.
Select the appropriate partition to scan
Step 4: Preview files during scanning, check required files, click (Recover) to restore to other disks.
preview before recovery
undeleter preview docx

III. Repair method of mobile hard disk not displaying full capacity

1. Re-format the mobile hard disk in disk management

If your mobile hard disk only shows the drive letter in the file explorer, but does not display the capacity and cannot be opened, you can try to reformat it in disk management. This will erase all data. If you have not backed up your data, refer to the second part for recovery steps:
Step 1: Right-click the Start menu, click (Disk Management).
windows disk management right click start
Step 2: Right-click the mobile hard disk that does not display the full capacity, and select (Format).
format drive
Step 3: Select the NTFS file system for Windows system usage, check “Execute quick format,” and click “OK.” Learn more about the features and differences of FAT32, NTFS, exFAT here.
quick Format
Step 4: The formatting operation will prompt you to clear all the data in the mobile hard disk, click (OK), and then wait for the formatting to complete. If the mobile hard disk cannot be successfully formatted in Disk Management, you can also format the mobile hard disk through the diskpart command.
Format and click OK

2. Use the Windows system disk error checking function

To address file system errors and bad sectors on a mobile hard disk, utilize the disk error checking function in the Windows system. Follow these steps:
Step 1: Connect the mobile hard disk to the computer, press (Windows Key + R key), enter (diskmgmt.msc) in the pop-up input box, and then click (OK) to enter Disk Management.
run disk management
Step 2: In Disk Management, right-click the target mobile hard disk partition, and then select (Properties) on the menu.
partition of hard drive
Step 3: In the (Tools) column, select (Check).
check disk
Step 4: For Windows 7 or Windows 8, check “Automatically repair file system errors” and “Scan and try to recover bad sectors”. Windows 10 automatically repairs all errors by default. Wait for the inspection and repair to complete.

3. Use the chkdsk command to repair the mobile hard disk

To repair the hard disk, use the chkdsk command. After repairing, the mobile hard disk’s capacity will display normally and can be used without issues:
Step 1: Search (cmd) directly in the search box in the lower left corner, and select (run as administrator) to open the command prompt.
run as administrator
Step 2: Enter ( chkdsk F: /f /r /x ) command and press the (Enter) key to check and fix external hard drive errors.
Chkdsk: Checks a volume’s file system and file system metadata for logical and physical errors.
F: Refers to the drive letter of the mobile hard disk partition;
/f will fix errors on disk;
/r will find bad sectors and restore readable information;
/x means to forcibly dismount the volume if necessary; any open handles to the drive will be invalidated.

Enter the chkdsk disk repair command

4. Convert MBR partition table to GPT

If the MBR partition table format is selected during initialization of the mobile hard disk, the maximum capacity is limited to 2TB. To display the remaining capacity beyond 2TB, convert the hard disk to a GPT partition table
Step 1: Backup or move important data on MBR hard drive.
Step 2: Right-click the (Start) menu, select (Computer Management), click (Disk Management), find the mobile hard disk to be converted to a GPT partition table, and delete all partitions until the hard disk becomes“unallocated”.
unallocated disk
Step 3: Right-click the removable hard drive, select (Convert to GPT Disk), and wait for the conversion to be completed. This will remove the 2TB capacity limit and display the full capacity.
convert 2 gpt