PCA Forums

I have a Seagate 1 TB USB Expansion Drive. I had it connected to my PC today when I went to re-install Windows 7 Ultimate. Once I discovered this, I disconnected it. When the install was complete, I connected the drive back up and Windows told me I needed to format the drive to use it. Well I did, since I accidentally formatted it before and was able to recover the data. That's what I planned on doing this time. However, after the format, Windows tells me I only have 302 GB on the drive instead of the 1 TB

Is there anything I can do to recover the 600+ GB that are inaccessible on the drive?

Thanks in advance,

MAC

Ack. I wouldn't have formatted it. I hope you did the Quick format and no the full.

If you open the Windows Disk Manager (right click My Computer, Manage, Disk Management) do you see the drive partitioned as a full 320Gb HDD or as a 1Tb HDD with a 320Gb partition on it? If it's showing as a 320Gb partition on a 1Tb drive then you may be able to delete the partition, create a new 1Tb partition, do a quick format and then run your favorite file recovery app.

If it's only showing up as a 320Gb drive then you need to try connecting it to a different PC and see if you can get it to be recognized as a 1Tb drive, or try running a partitioning app like Acronis Disk Manager from a DOS boot disk on it.

Hope this helps...