Formatted Segate expansion portable drive, i broke it

[jimtimber]

Hi,
I have a 4Tb Seagate Expansion Portable Drive.

My Windows messed up so I (stupidly) used the portable drive to save the Windows recovery files to.

However, this wiped everything (mostly recovered now) but no matter what format I format it as (NTFS,FAT32 etc), the space available after is a fraction of what it was (now just 31.9gb). How do I reset it back to what it was please?

[Ajfer03]

Step 1: Connect The Drive
Step 2: Hit the Windows Key and R at the same time.
Step 3: When the "Run" box pops up, type in diskmgmt.msc
Step 4: Find your portable drive from the list, you should see all of the partitions on it currently. BE SURE IT IS NOT DRIVE 0!
Step 5: Backup the files you would like to keep that are currently on the drive. (You will lose your files!)
Step 6: This is important, delete all of the partitions that have the color blue on them. To delete, simply hover over the box (Partition) you want to get rid of and right click it. When the menu pops up, select delete partition. Be sure to delete, and not format.
Step 7: After doing that, should should be left with a long box that has a black line on top.
Step 8: Right-click on the box with the black line above, and select create partition.
Step 9: Complete the wizard without touching any of the settings, and you should be left with a hard drive that is as good as new.

If you are unsure of how to do this, refer to this video. Be wary, this guy is using the hard drive that windows came installed on! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIWh5sFdtcw

[Geek-9pm]

Here is another thing to consider.
At one time there was an issue with using very large hard drives.
Look here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/5b26c3bf-a4ae-4604-944d-cd1b53bfaecf/windows-7-doesnt-recognize-all-of-a-4-tb-drive
Above is about windows 7.

https://www.aioboot.com/en/partition-4tb-hard-drive/
The above is about windows 10.

Windows limits 2TB to MBR disk. This article will guide you how to partition a 4TB Hard Drive with GParted for use on Windows 10.

The GPartd is not a Windows utility, but a version of it for windows is available.

Also, Seagate has specific recommendations about their 4 TB hard drives.
This link might help:
https://www.seagate.com/support/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/desktop-hdd/

Sorry, I can not find the specific software hat goes with that product.   

[jimtimber]

Step 8: Right-click on the box with the black line above, and select create partition.
Step 9: Complete the wizard without touching any of the settings, and you should be left with a hard drive that is as good as new.

If you are unsure of how to do this, refer to this video. Be wary, this guy is using the hard drive that windows came installed on! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIWh5sFdtcw

Hi Ajfer, thanks for the help. Everything went well up to point 8. When I right click it only gave option to create single volume. I did this and followed through wizard and it created a 2Tb partition. However, I can still see there is 1678Gb unallocated. How do I get that to be part of the new partition I created please? There is no options if I right click that on the screen. Please see screenshot.

Thanks again.

[Ajfer03]

If you click on the 2TB partition and click on the option I highlighted, then you should be able to use the rest of your drive.

If this does not work, then delete that 2TB partition so the whole drive will be unallocated.
Create a new partition in that unallocated space again. When the wizard comes up this time, watch for when it asks what the size of the partition will be. Be sure to max it out, then finish the wizard.

If you have anymore questions, feel free to ask!

[BC_Programmer]

2TB is probably the largest because the drive is initialized as MBR. It would need to be reinitialized as GPT in order to use the full space again.