Windows 10: External 6Tb Hard drive is now 1.5Tb!

My 6Tb external backup hard drive was having problems. I decided to reformat it. When I tried it failed & Windows identified it as a RAW drive, not NTFS.

I tried Seagate Tools but that said the drive was okay. I deleted the volume & created a Simple Volume, then formatted to NTFS but it now only reads 1.5Tb. The only thing I can think of the portions of the drive had gone bad but 1.5Tb is still working.

What happened? Can it be restored to the full 6Tb?

:)

 

6tb external hard drive reads 1.5tb unallocated in Windows 10?

Thanks. It appears the issue was because I had the new, unformatted drive setup as an external USB drive. I have since connected the drive in my case via SATA & now able to format to NTFS all 6Tb. I'll move it back to USB but I'm guessing it will be okay now that it's formatted.

 

6tb external hard drive reads 1.5tb unallocated in Windows 10?

Using a new 6tb external hard drive plugged into a USB port for backup. Need to format but it only reads 1.5tb of unallocated space in Windows 10? Is this an Intel RST driver issue? If so, how can I tell if the RST driver need updating?

Windows 10 64-bit ver 1703 OS Build 15063.540
AMD 1700 8-core
Asus Prime X370-Pro MB

 

6tb external hard drive reads 1.5tb unallocated in Windows 10?

Try using diskpart. With the drive connected, open a Command Prompt (Admin) or Powershell (Admin) and run:

diskpart
list disk
select disk # <- replace the # with the actual number assigned to the 6TB external hard drive
clean <- this will completely erase the drive selected above, make sure it is the new external drive!
convert gpt
exit
exit

You should then see 6tb unallocated space in Windows that you can partition and format however you like.