Hey everyone! My dad got this "3TB" external HDD some time ago, but it turned out to be only 320GB after I checked. He returned it and gave it to me. I tried to use Balena Etcher to flash Linux onto it for my old secondary laptop, but I ended up not using it. Now I want to format it for storage, but it only shows up as 7GB! I followed a YouTube tutorial that said to use the command prompt and enter diskpart, then clean the drive, but after that, it said the drive wasn't installed. Someone in the comments suggested using Device Manager to reinitialize it. Unfortunately, after all that, it doesn't show up in the system anymore. Any advice on what I can do? Thanks!
2 Answers
It sounds like your hard drive could be a fake model or just failing. Remember, if it's too good to be true, it usually is! That said, if it's still spinning and showing up in Diskpart, you might be able to get it back. Try using the Disk Management app instead of Device Manager to see if you can reassign a drive letter or format it from there. Just make sure to back up anything important before trying anything, if you get it working again! Good luck!
Honestly, it might just be a lost cause if the drive has failed. External drives like this often come with a lot of hidden issues, especially if it was labeled incorrectly. You could try some recovery software just to see if anything is salvageable but be prepared that it might not be repairable. Sometimes it might just be time to let go and consider it an expensive lesson learned.
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