laptop hdd issue

[subfire91]

Hi,

i have taken out three hard drives from dead laptops. my problem is that when i put the drives in an enclosure and connect them to the pc to format them, it shows me that the partition after the format can only get up to 20 mb or so. does anyone have a clue on what is might be going on ? This occurs for all drives

Thank you

[Fuzz]

Are you doing this through disk manager, or file explorer? I assume you have win 7 and connecting via USB?

[Hammer_Time]

Hey Subfire, it sounds like you are accessing a "recovery partition" on those laptop hdd's , as explained here:

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/h ... 23028.html

You need a partition manager to get rid of that tiny recovery ( or windows boot ) partition, and then partition the drive as a single partition and format it:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/content ... tion_Guide

Just install one of those free partition managers and then you can easily delete or resize partitions... you can also do this through Windows Disk Management but its probably easier to use a disk partition manager to do it if you are unfamiliar with Windows builtin Disk Management. Good luck!

[Sauron_Daz]

What is the size of the disks? Should say that somewhere on their cases.

[subfire91]

hi guys thnx for the help.

the size of the two disks are 160 and 320 GB i dont remember the third one though. I tried to do it through windows disk management and it still says that the available space is only about 20 mb. It doesn't recognize the rest.

im using win8 and im connecting with usb

[Hammer_Time]

I see, try one of the partition managers, does it show you the rest of the disk space? ( or more than 1 partition on each disk?)

[Fuzz]

In Windows disk management you will probably see something like this:



Find the disk you want to format, from the list on the left. On the right, you will probably see the small partition, then some bigger ones. So for example, from the image above, disk 3 has 3 partitions. You need to right click on each one and select "delete partition". Once they are deleted, it will merge into one "unallocated" You can then format that. Make sure you don't do any of this to your system drive!

[subfire91]

same screenshot as you but my strange "drives" show one partition only 20mb size. Formatting it gives 20.x mb unallocated space

[Fuzz]

Interesting... do you know if these drives are encrypted?

Perhaps give tool diskpart a try, as specified here:

http://www.winability.com/delete-protec ... partition/

[Sauron_Daz]

Even if encrypted, the disk manager should see the whole capacity of the drive.
Unless they are broken..

[Hammer_Time]

Are these drives out of Mac laptop? If they are formatted for Mac that would explain it...or Linux

A proper Disk Partition utility should let you see the whole drive...

Are you sure you are connecting the HDD's up properly in the USB enclosure?

A working USB interface improperly connected to a hard drive could appear as an unformatted drive.

I'd make absolutely certain that the drive was properly connected to the interface card that's in that external enclosure. Double (even triple) check that all of the assembly instructions were followed and that the drive is attached the right way.

Try plugging the USB cable into a different USB port on your computer, or try it in a totally different system if possible...might be some weird USB incompatibility...

If still no luck then try this:

http://blog.paulgu.com/windows/delete-g ... partition/

[Sauron_Daz]

That command used to be 'fdisk'. Now its called diskpart?

[Hammer_Time]

fdisk was for Win 9x years ago...

Win 2000 and XP use "diskpart" instead:

http://www.antionline.com/showthread.ph ... t-commands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fdisk

[Sauron_Daz]

Yea, i checked.
Imagine how long ago it was when I really needed the program...