Hard Drive Only Shows Half Capacity? How to Recover Its Data?

It is well known that you can view the hard drive capacity in Windows Explorer. Moreover, when you do this operation, you may discover that hard drive only shows half capacity.

Then, you search for this issue on the internet and you can see that many users have encountered this issue. A user described his issue on Reddit as follows:

A 2TB hard drive shows as only 1TB. It is a typical hard drive only shows half capacity issue. Now, in this post, we will mainly focus on how to recover data from such a hard drive using a piece of free data recovery software and how to make this disk back to its normal state.

Part 1: Recover Files from Hard Drive Not Showing Full Capacity Windows 10/8/7

According to some users’ feedbacks, hard drive only shows half capacity always leads to data loss issue. If you are also facing this issue, you will want to search for a solution to recover these missing files.

Generally speaking, you need to use a piece of third-party data recovery software to get your lost data back. MiniTool Power Data Recovery is a good choice.

This MiniTool data recovery software is designed to recover files from different data storage medium like hard drives, SD cards, memory cards, USB flash drives, CDs/DVDs, etc. using its four recovery modules: This PC, Removable Disk Drive, Hard Disk Drive, and CD/DVD Drive.

Among these four recovery modules, This PC and Hard Disk Drive can be used to recover data from computer hard drives:

• This PC is used to recover files from the logically damaged partitions, RAW partitions and formatted partitions. It is the most powerful recovery module.
• Hard Disk Drive module can recover your data from the lost partitions.

So, if you want to recover your lost files from hard drive showing wrong capacity, you can choose to use these two recovery modules accordingly.

Now, you can download and install MiniTool Power Data Recovery Trial Edition on your computer to check whether it can find your lost files. If yes, you can get a full edition of this software to recover your data without limitation.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Now we will run MiniTool Power Data Recovery Personal Deluxe on Windows 10 to show you how to utilize this data recovery software to restore your lost data.

Step 1: Register the Software to Use It

After launching this software, you will enter the registration window. Then, you need to copy the license code and paste it into the text box on the window to register the software.

After that, you will enter This PC interface by default.

Note: If you need to do offline registration, you can learn from this tutorial: How to Register.

Step 2: Choose a Proper Recovery Module to Scan the Target Hard Drive

Four recovery modules are listed on the left side of this data recovery software, and you need to choose a suitable one to scan your hard drive.

Here, we take the most powerful recovery module This PC as an example.

On the software interface, you will see a Settings button. With it, you can only check the files’ types you want to recover. After checking, please click on OK button to quit this window.

Then, please choose the target hard drive only shows half capacity from the software interface and click on the Scan button to start the scanning process.

The software will begin to scan the selected hard disk. If there are a large amount of files on that drive, the scanning process will cost you a long time. Please be patient.

Step 3: Check Your Wanted Files from the Scan Result Interface to Recover

When the scanning process finishes, you will see the scan result. By default, the scanned files are classified by path and you can unfold each folder to find your wanted files.

You may note that there are some options on this interface like Type, Show Lost Files, Find, Filter, Preview, and Export Scan Result.

What are they used for?

Type
If you click on Type, all the scanned files will be listed by the types. Thus, you can find your files easily.

Show Lost Files
By using this feature, you can make the software only show you the lost files.

Find
After clicking on Find, you can input the name of the file you want to recover and locate it directly.

Filter
In case that you don’t remember the names of the files you want to recover, you can use this function to filter the scanned files which can also assist you to find your needed files quickly.

Preview
With this software, you can preview images files and text files which are smaller than 20 MB. After clicking these kinds of files, you can press Preview button to check whether it is the file you want to recover.

Export Scan Result
After pressing this button, you will be able to save the scan result on your computer in an .rss file. Next time, you can use the full edition of this software to load the scan result directly.

Now, you know the detailed usage of these six functions, and you can choose one to use accordingly.

After finding the files you want to recover, you need to click on the Save button. Then, you will see the Select a directory to save files interface.

On this interface, you are able to choose a proper path to save the selected files. Please remember that you’d better save the files to another drive rather than its original location. Otherwise, the lost files may be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery helps me recover data from the hard drive which only shows half capacity. I would like to share it with you.Click to tweet

Now, your wanted files are recovered to a safe location. Then, you can feel free to fix this hard drive showing wrong size issue.

Please read the next part to get some available solutions.

Part 2: Fix Hard Drive Only Shows Half Capacity Windows 10/8/7

Now, we summarize two possible ways for you to solve this hard drive only shows half capacity issue: formatting the hard disk and wiping the hard drive.

You will lose all of your data on the hard drive by using these ways. So, please make sure that all of your important files on the drive are recovered to a safe path.

Way 1: Format the Hard Drive to Its Full Capacity

When you are facing hard drive not showing full capacity issue, you can try to format the target drive to check whether it can go back to its normal state. And this is the quick way to fix this issue.

Please open the Disk Management on your computer. Then, right-click on the target hard drive and choose Format from the pop-out menu.

On the second pop-out window, you can decide the Volume label, File system and Allocation unit size according to your need. After that, you need to press OK to start the formatting process.

When the process is finished, you can check whether the hard drive showing wrong capacity issue is solved or not.

If this way doesn’t work for you, please try way 2.

Way 2: Wipe the Disk to Its Full Capacity

Now, you need to use a professional partition manager to wipe the target hard drive. In this post, we recommend you to use the free MiniTool Partition Wizard and its Wipe Partition function.

Step 1: You need to download this free partition software from the MiniTool official site and install it on your computer.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2: You can open the software to enter its main interface. Then, you need to choose the hard drive which shows wrong capacity and press Wipe Disk from the left action panel.

Step 3: There will be a pop-out window on which you can see five wiping methods. You need to check one wiping method and click on the OK button.

Step 4: You will be able to preview the wiping effect after you go back to the software main interface. Then, you need to click on the Apply button to execute this change.

You can note that the target hard drive becomes unallocated space after wiping it. To use this hard drive as usual, you need to create a partition or partitions on it.

Fortunately, you can still use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to create the partition to make the drive to be shown on Windows Explorer.

Create Partition is the exact function you are going to use.

Then, there is no need to quit MiniTool Partition Wizard, and you can directly use this function to create a partition or partitions on that fixed hard drive.

Step 1: You need to click on the unallocated space and choose Create Partition from the left action panel.

Step 2: This software will pop out a window on which you can input the partition label, choose the partition file system, drive letter, and cluster size. You can also set it as a primary or logical partition.

Also, you can specify the size of the partition by dragging the arrow on the window. And you can put the mouse cursor on the partition and drag it to decide its location.

After that, please click on OK to quit this window.

Step 3: You will go back to the software’s main interface. Then, you need to click on the Apply button to execute the change.

If you want to create more than one partition on the target hard drive, you need to repeat the above three steps.

Format or wipe the drive can fix hard drive only shows half capacity issue. You can try these two methods.Click to tweet

Recommendation: How Can You Fix 3TB Drive Only Shows 746GB in Windows 10

Part 3: Fix Flash Drive Showing Wrong Capacity Windows 10/8/7

When your flash drive shows wrong capacity, you can also format or wipe it to normal. The operations are same with the above part. We will not repeat them here.

While, there is one more thing you should know: at times, if the flash drive has been divided into more than one partition and some of the partitions have no drive letters, the flash drive also shows wrong capacity in File Explorer. In a situation like this, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to add a drive letter for the partition to make File Explorer show all partitions on the flash drive.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Part 4: Some Normal Situations of Flash Drive/Hard Drive Showing Wrong Capacity

Sometimes, hard drive showing wrong size is a normal phenomenon. This issue can be caused by invisible files, formatting overhead, hidden recovery partitions, different calculation methods, and more.

You can read this article to know more normal situations of this issue: Why Do Hard Drives Show the Wrong Capacity in Windows?

Part 5: Conclusion

Are you bothered by hard drive only shows half capacity or flash drive showing wrong capacity? Do you want to solve the issue?

In this post, we suggest you to use MiniTool Power Data Recovery to retrieve your data firstly. Then, you can format the hard drive or wipe the hard drive to its full capacity.

Should you have any questions when you are using MiniTool software, please feel free to contact us. You can send an email to [email protected]. Also, you can leave a message on the following comment area. Any available suggestions are also appreciated here.

Hard Drive only Shows Half Capacity FAQ