Solved: 500GB Hard Drive Formats to 43GB

[MajorOak]

I have a Maxtor 500gb External hard drive (2 weeks old). Tried quick reformat after an error and it only formats to 43gb (NTFS ). Ran chkdsk and that reports 500gb (approx) with no bad sectors, etc. Am I missing something simple or is the drive useles. (I can copy stuff onto the 43gb space).

 

[crjdriver]

With externals, I always recommend deleting ALL partitions on the drive and create one using disk management.

If DM shows the full size of the drive, you should then be able to delete/create partition and format with ntfs.

 

[bigbear]

Go to diskmanagement and see if you have a partition, it may just need formatting before you can use it.
Go to start>run type diskmgmt.msc and hit enter

 

[MajorOak]

Thx to both of you for your response. It was a partition problem (380gb) which didn't show initially. Changed USB lead with another drive and it then appeared!!!! Formatted and everything working OK now. Thx for the advice

 

[crjdriver]

Good work