audio-talk

I've got a nice small Toshiba 500GB ext USB HD that I used use to automatically (via W10 'settings') back up my laptop files.

For some reason it now thinks its a 32GB HD not a 500GB anymore. Erks.

Years ago NickdS (Jack) linked to a very helpful tool called 'HP USB Storage Format Tool, V2.1.8' that in the past has always enabled me to reformat either an SD card or USB pen drive that was causing a problem.

Not so this time, it informs me that 'Device media is write protected'.

A Google search brings up software that says it can do just this but 'user reviews' often don't agree.

Is there a simple way to reformat the drive to get the full 500GB quota back? The existing files are not mission critical as I've backed up my laptop elsewhere.

when you plug the usb drive into the computer it should appear on your windows explorer drive list. Under normal circumstances you would just put the cursor on the drive concerned and right click. This should give a menu with format in the list. Selecting this should allow you to format the disc with 2 or 3 options for the format type, e.g FAT, FAT32 or NTFS.

the fact that you only have 32gb showing indicates you may have a partition issue so you only see a 32gb partition on that drive. Win 10 has a partition tool built in(I beleive!) but if not there are a bunch of free partition tools you can down load. It sounds like you might need to re-partition the drive with one partition of 512gb.

if you go into control panel, administrative tools, computer management...
you will see a left hand entry for disk management...select this
you will be shown all the partitions on each drive connected...

In my version of W10 the "administrative tools, computer management... " folders are not in control panel.

ed wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 8:11 am

if you go into control panel, administrative tools, computer management...
you will see a left hand entry for disk management...select this
you will be shown all the partitions on each drive connected...

Hot dang!

Got it, ta Eddy-babes!

In the edition of W10 I'm using here I have to right click on the start menu then up comes disk management amongst other 'things'.

et viola....


'E' drive was the drive that thought it was a 32GB FAT32 HD. I used this prog -> AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard to unpartition the drive and got its full 500GB back (well, 465.76 GB NTFS it says).

Proper Techno stuff, phwoooaaarrr!