Windows 10: Disk Management Issue -- Again

I had this issue once before and was helped, but I honestly can't remember how I was helped, and between Sevenforums, Eightforums, and Tenforums, I cannot find my old thread. So, with that in mind, here is the problem I'm having:





The 4TB drive (see the black, unallocated chunks) is showing one GPT protected partition (which cannot be deleted) and two RAW partitions which cannot seem to be consolidated. I need to make the entire drive one partition so it can be used as a backup drive for a hotswap bay. This came out of a Seagate external HDD enclosure, and the drive was originally formatted FAT32, and the enclosure utilized a PCB to make the entire drive accessible (probably for mac compatibility). Anyway... I don't remember how I converted the last drive, and really wish I had documented it. Help??

:)

 

Disk Management issues

So, I was able to fix it (kind-of). I downloaded minitool partition wizard which was able to see the drive and rename it to drive E:. Once that was done, explorer worked fine and I could pull all of my files off perfectly (woo-hoo!).

Now, however, I have removed the drive and explorer stills shows drive E: . When I click on it, it says E:\ is unavailable..... Any idea how to remove this drive? I tried the minitool application, but it doesnt see a drive there to be able to remove it.
I tried the disk manager, but it also doesnt see the drive. Nothing except explorer shows that E:\ drive. It doesnt mess anything up to have a non-functioning drive, I just figure I should clean it up while I am dealing with all of this.

Thanks for any insight!!!

 

Disk Management issues

I am trying to access an old hard drive from a previous computer. I have it attached to a windows 10 PC via IDE converter plugged into a USB drive. When I connect the drive, windows give me the sound that a device was just detected, but I dont see anything
in my computer that has changed or any sign that a new drive is connected.

My suspicion was that the drive was not seen because it my have had the same drive letter as my exisiting PC. If I access Disk Management through the computer management window, I see the drive I am looking for and it shows "Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)"
and no drive letter is assigned to it. Right clicking in this window shows everything greyed out except the "delete volume" and "help" options.

Any advice as to how I can set up the PC to access this drive? Thanks in advance!!!!

Here are the images of what I am seeing with the right click as well.

 

Open cmd.exe as administrator.

Run these commands EXACTLY or risk huge data loss.

Code: diskpart sel dis 3 cle conv gpt cre par pri format fs=ntfs quick ass letter=S exit exit[/quote] "ass letter=S" change that S to whatever drive letter you desire if you so choose

 

You can use diskpart.exe to delete that partition, and then convert the disk to GPT. If you are not familiar with diskpart, try a free partition manager software. you can find many of then in the internet.

 

"ass letter=S" change that S to whatever drive letter you desire if you so choose[/quote] Bonus points for the command line info; it's my preferred method of doing things. Thank you!

PS: Bookmarked.

 

I didn't know there are abbreviated versions of the instructions. I would use the whole words, such as select disk 3, clean, convert gpt, create partition primary, format fs=ntfs quick, assign letter=s. Just make sure the disk you want to use is 3 (see Disk Management again) so as not to accidentally wipe any other disk! I would rather disconnect everything else and use a Windows DVD-ROM to run diskpart from there.

 

@spapakons I started writing this post for that very reason, but fell asleep before finishing it last nght *Smile
@kbronski and @the random google searcher that lands here:


Full commands and brief explanation.

Open cmd.exe as administrator.

Run diskpart.exe to do unrestricted disk and partition management
Code: diskpart[/quote] Select the disk you intend to modify. The number (3 in this case) directly relates to number shown in the Disk Management GUI. You DO NOT want to select the wrong disk and issue the clean command. Otherwise you will need third party recovery software.
Code: select disk 3[/quote] Permanently (still recoverable in emergency) remove all partitions from the disk.
Code: clean[/quote] Convert the disks partition table to the modern GPT format. Allows more partitions, and has protection against corruption. (also required to boot Windows
Code: convert gpt[/quote] Create a single "primary" (primary/logical is irrelevant to GPT disks, but Windows still uses this term in this program) partition, spanning the entire disk.
Code: create partition primary[/quote] The newly created partition is automatically selected, so you can issue the format command to write a filesystem to it. The filesystem in this case is NTFS, and the option quick means that instead if erasing the partition, it just writes an empty filesystem to it. It will behave like an erased disk, but old data is still recoverable until you write enough data to the disk to cover the old data. Only omit the quick option if security is a concern, or if the disk behaves strangely. (I've had Windows 7 install not accept a non-zeroed disk a couple times. Irrelevant with modern operating systems.)
Code: format fs=ntfs quick[/quote] Now we assign a drive letter to the disk. This will mount the filesystem and allow you to access and store files on the partition.
Code: assign letter=S[/quote] Now we're done, we issue the exit command first to exit diskpart, and a second time to close the CMD prompt. You can also just closer the window at this point. Does the same thing.
Code: exit exit[/quote]

 

Select the disk you intend to modify. The number (3 in this case) directly relates to number shown in the Disk Management GUI. You DO NOT want to select the wrong disk and issue the clean command. Otherwise you will need third party recovery software.
Code: select disk 3[/quote] Permanently (still recoverable in emergency) remove all partitions from the disk.
Code: clean[/quote] Convert the disks partition table to the modern GPT format. Allows more partitions, and has protection against corruption. (also required to boot Windows
Code: convert gpt[/quote] Create a single "primary" (primary/logical is irrelevant to GPT disks, but Windows still uses this term in this program) partition, spanning the entire disk.
Code: create partition primary[/quote] The newly created partition is automatically selected, so you can issue the format command to write a filesystem to it. The filesystem in this case is NTFS, and the option quick means that instead if erasing the partition, it just writes an empty filesystem to it. It will behave like an erased disk, but old data is still recoverable until you write enough data to the disk to cover the old data. Only omit the quick option if security is a concern, or if the disk behaves strangely. (I've had Windows 7 install not accept a non-zeroed disk a couple times. Irrelevant with modern operating systems.)
Code: format fs=ntfs quick[/quote] Now we assign a drive letter to the disk. This will mount the filesystem and allow you to access and store files on the partition.
Code: assign letter=S[/quote] Now we're done, we issue the exit command first to exit diskpart, and a second time to close the CMD prompt. You can also just closer the window at this point. Does the same thing.
Code: exit exit[/quote] [/quote]
Yes, I gathered all of that by reading the initial code you had posted. Thanks, though.