Windows 7 External HDD recognised only as 8Gb

[nmc]

I have a 1 Tb external SATA HDD in a powered enclosure. Connection is by USB or eSATA. Win 7 disk management recognises the existence of the disk as basic online but thinks it is only 8 Gb. The disk does not appear in 'My Computer' and I cannot format it as a 1Tb disk or write to it. Grateful for a solution.

 

[Saltgrass]

Have you looked at in in Disk Management? That might you some more information.

Are you using the Drive with another OS?

 

[nmc]

Sadly Disk Management only recognises it as being online and 8Gb. The disk is new and has not been formatted. It may be that the 8Gb is the cache, but I'm not sure.

 

[Saltgrass]

If it shows in Disk Management, go ahead and format part of it. See what happens, start with 100 GB or something small. I do not remember how my 1.5 TB drive behaved, but I may not have looked that close.

On the left end of the Disk Management Disk 0 (or whatever) you do not see any type of red marks that might indicate the drive has not been initialized?

How old is the bios on your system? There may also be restriction with the external enclosure.

 

[nmc]

Sorry for the delay in replying. Disk Management shows the disk having only 8Gb. I've tried formatting a part of it as suggested. The system runs then says it cannot find virtual disk controller, and that's it. Seems this is a constant problem for people with everyone saying there is something missing from the Win 7 OS which permit easy access to external USB drives. Grateful for any more thoughts.

 

[Joe S]

Is this a drive you built or a commercial one? If it's a do it yourself you may not have a proper driver. WD and Seagate and others should have drivers available in Windows unless this is a pre Windows 7 drive. If you built this up yourself check the enclosure maker's site for drivers.
Joe