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'My Computer' not showing proper GBs

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aidee

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Posted January 2, 2013 at 8:07PM

Hi, I received a humungus amount of help in answer to my HDD query. I now ask for help with the following. I have added the 500GB External HDD, and copied a few files, but when I open 'My Computer', under the 'G' drive (my Ext HDD), it states 55.5 GB free of 55.7GB. ???? AD

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iscanut2

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Posted January 2, 2013 at 8:16PM

What Op System are you using. How is the external drive formatted ? FAT or NTFS ? Have you looked to see what is on the drive ?

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aidee

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Posted January 2, 2013 at 9:01PM

Hi iscanut, My Laptop uses Vista H/Premium and the Ext HDD is formatted to the same asw the Comp NTFS. Thanks, AD

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aidee

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Posted January 2, 2013 at 9:01PM

Hi iscanut, My Laptop uses Vista H/Premium and the Ext HDD is formatted to the same asw the Comp NTFS. Thanks, AD

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lotvic

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Posted January 2, 2013 at 10:18PM

Maybe you ought to check the size GB in Disk Management How to access Disk Management also usually external harddrives come formatted to Fat32, did you change it to NTFS yourself? While you are in disk management look to see if there are any parts marked 'Unallocated' on your G:\ ext drive

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aidee

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Posted January 3, 2013 at 10:21AM

Hi lotvic, I checked in Disk Management and the correct volumes are shown. I have 408 MB 'unallocated' and the rest is the files I have already transferred. When I first received the Ext HDD, the manufacturer's instructions were to Reformat to NTFS.

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aidee

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Posted January 3, 2013 at 10:21AM

Hi lotvic, I checked in Disk Management and the correct volumes are shown. I have 408 MB 'unallocated' and the rest is the files I have already transferred. When I first received the Ext HDD, the manufacturer's instructions were to Reformat to NTFS.

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alanrwood

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Posted January 3, 2013 at 3:50PM

If the space is unallocated it means that as far as Windows is concerned it does not exist. You need to create a partition in the unallocated space or extend the size of the existing partition. Look in Disk Management as above and if the files are only copies, delete the existing partition and then create a new one using all the disk space.

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iscanut2

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Posted January 3, 2013 at 4:29PM

Its very odd that you should not be getting the full capacity after formatting. Normally all you need do is plug in, format and away you go. Why should there be unallocated space ? Strange. Sorry that I cannot offer help as I would be stumped as well. I have never had this sort of problem when adding external USB HDDs.

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alanrwood

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Posted January 3, 2013 at 4:47PM

Only thing I can think of is that when he reformatted the drive to NTFS he also changed the partition size leaving the vast majority of the disk unallocated.

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lotvic

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Posted January 3, 2013 at 6:57PM

"checked in Disk Management and the correct volumes are shown. I have 408 MB 'unallocated'

Can you check again please, I wonder if you mean 408 GB and not MB unallocated as that would work out about right for a 500GB harddrive (they are always in total a bit less than they say because of the 1024 unit to divide by)

When you see the bar graph illustration of the drive, does the G partition take up all of the space and only leave a tiny, tiny bit 'unallocated'

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