hi Folks,

 

Looking for some new suggestions here.

 

Situation:

I have a WD 3TB HDD MYBook Essentials (WD30EZRX) USB3 external drive and had been using it to backup my flight sim files of which there were Gb saved on it. The other day I switched it on and a message appeared indicating the Disk was not initialized and to initialize it,  but I cancelled out of that window because I knew there was data on there and had been accessible. The disk was powered up I could only see 746GB instead of the 3Tb. I could not see any files. Weird! As far as I remember it only had a single partition on it. 

 

Things I have tried:

On running Windows Disk Management it confirmed that I only have a 746Gb partition and a single volume could be seen, but the remainder of the drive is completely invisible i.e. it does not even show unallocated for a 2nd volume, so the remaining space on the 3Tb drive just seems to have vanished!
The disk size shown directly under the Disk number in Disk Management shows 746Gb, not 3Tb! (in many other cases where 3Tb is not available, at least the unallocated space is shown and the size under the Disk number shows ~3Tb, but not in this case!)

I have tried converting it to GPT but again the drive appears limited to 746Gb.

I have installed the Intel RST driver and again no change.

I have used EaseUS Free Partition Manager, Minitool Partition Wizard, DMDE and they all show the same thing as Disk Management -only a 746Gb drive.

I also tried doing a deep scan using the DMDE data recovery tool but it only found a few broken files but no lost partitions.

 

I have removed the 3Tb WD HDD from the Elements housing and connected it via a separate USB/SATA cable/adapter so I can eliminate the WD onboard controller but again the same result.

I have connected this drive externally via USB3 to 3 different PCs, 2 running Windows 11 (my Flightsim PC and one other) and 1 running Windows 10. Exactly the same result.

If I copy some files to the 746Gb partition, files are saved and can be accessed so in principle part of the drive is at least working.

If I connect another 8Tb external HDD via USB3 to the same PC , all 8Tb are discovered.
 

Bottomline: It looks like my HDD really did shrink to 746Gb! however the label on the HDD indicates 3Tb.

What I have not tried yet: Connected the HDD internally to a motherboard power/SATA connector. Is it worth trying this do you think?

 

What else may be worth trying to see if I can get the full 3Tb back or is this a lost cause now? I realize with the GPT conversion the data is gone anyway.

 

 

Thx!
Mark

Yikes...I don't think I would ever be able to trust that drive again even if I found a way to reinitialize/reformat the drive to it's original 3TB capacity.