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External hard drive - problem reading unused space **SOLVED**

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barryman:
External hard drive - unused space problem

 I have a Seagate GoFlex 250 gb ext. hard drive. I have backed up about 140 gb of data onto it but it currently shows only 23 gb of unused space remaining!! Even allowing for the true storage being about 232gb, that cannot be correct.
I have tried defragging the drive, have run "chkdsk" on it but still says 23 gb remaining. I really do not want to reformat the whole thing so what can I do.
Also, I looked with Windows Disk Management (see attached screenshot) and it shows the F drive to be healthy (active, primary partition etc). The only thing is that it does not pick up whether it is NTFS or FAT but I have had it for over two years and it's never been a problem backing up to it.
What can I do to check or restore unused space -  avoiding reformatting if at all possible

Boggin:
I'm not sure how you have used chkdsk on it but I have a Seagate 500GB external HDD and in an elevated cmd prompt, I type f: which changes the directory and then enter chkdsk which identifies it as NTFS before going onto scan it in read-only mode.

Edit
Not having to ever deal with this issue, a Google found for this instance that it was a Permissions issue which resolved for the OP in http://superuser.com/questions/586534/windows-explorer-displaying-wrong-free-space but the chkdsk read-only mode will show how much has been used and what is still available.

Shane:
It is very odd that it shows the drive as having 100% free in the screen shot and it doesnt show if it is ntfs or not.

The MBR (Master Boot Record) is suppose to report the partition sizes and types.

I have had users who reported that a drive show TBs of data in use on a 250 GB hard drive (an insane number that the drive in no way could hold), what was wrong was the file system was messed up, after then ran chkdsk on the drive and told it to fix anything it finds then everything started reporting properly.

chkdsk f: /f

will have chkdsk fix any problems and only check the file system and such.

chkdsk f: /r

will do all of the same but also two extra steps where it testes all the data and sectors on the drive as well.

I would do the chkdsk f: /r and see what it reports or if it fixes it :wink:

Shane

Boggin:
Just wondering if refreshing its driver by uninstalling it in Device Manager then either a reboot or Action/Scan for hardware changes would help Windows to recognize it properly ?

When I try anything like this, I always create a restore point first.

Shane:
There are times where when I plug in my external drive windows will say it is unrecognized and ask to format it, I say no, unplug the drive and plug it back in and then it is fine. Windows tried to read the drive info before it was ready, doesnt happen all the time but it does happen.

Shane

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