Phantom hard drive - where is it?

Sorry, these should be clearer links:

This PC:

MiniTool Partition Wizard is an excellent tool for this sort of thing, it's free and more usable than disk management:

Yes, I posted the wrong screenshot. Here's the correct one:

Bert

Here's the whole disk management screen (except for CD-ROM 0 - DVD (F:)) which is out of sight at the bottom of the list.

Ah. yes. the 2TB drive seems to be a 220MB NTFS partition E: and and unformatted partition H:

If it were linux you can 'grow' the 220MB NTFS partition to use the whole disk, but I haven't a clue how to do that with Windows

If you right click on the little block that says "Disk 3" in the lower half of the table and select "properties" it will tell you about physical piece of hardware that this line represents

If you repeat for the line with "Disk 2" that may resolve your problem.

You should be able to match this up to the disks in the hardware section of computer management.

Dave

The lower half shows physical drives, so Disk 2 and Disk 3 are separate physical drives. Disk Manager has always used 1024 multipliers for mb and gb whereas manufacturers use 1000 so a 2tb drive shows as 1,836 gb in disk manager.

if they were on the same drive, just right click on the partition and you can grow or shrink the partition, but they are not.

I suspect there is an SD card or similar left in the machine thats giving the 220 mb drive.

Dave Dave

Dave

Brilliant: that was exactly the case.

By disconnecting everything and starting from there, I discovered a solid state drive that I didn't know was installed. Removing it suddenly put everything to rights.

I wonder if perhaps the drive or the connection to it is faulty: certainly, until yesterday it hadn't ever shown up. I'll try running it as an external drive and see what happens.

LATER:

Connected using an external housing and USB cable, both of which I know to be working, the drive didn't register at all, either in This Computer or Disk Management. So I suspect it's an ex-drive.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts and comments. I'm sorry I didn't try every possibility first.

Bert

I think its just called "Disk Management"? - which is under Computer Management

Just type "Computer Management" in the search box at the bottom of the screen and it should show up

There is another route to it from the Control Panel - but I cant remember exactly how

I went straight to Disk Management by pressing the Windows key + R and entering "diskmgmt.msc" in the Run box.

does that give you the option of pinning it to the task bar ?

Not as far as I can see, no.

There are two tools. "Disk Management" which just shows disks and the way they are partitioned, and lets you manage partitions. I mentioned the other "Device Manager" which shows all hardware devices including disk drives and allows you to manage drivers etc. As in this tool you can change the view to show "devices by connection". I thought this might help locate the errant device.

There are lots of ways to access these Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug-ins. Both are part of the "Computer Management" console, or can be accessed directly. I usually right click on the funny start thing in windows/10 and 11, to get these but there are many other routes to the same tools. None is "the right way" its whatever works for you.

If you wanted you could even create a custom MMC console with just these tools and pin it to the start bar... If you are bored type MMC into the run box and see what plug-ins there are.

.. and for completeness there is also a command-line tool "diskpart" which is most arcane, but which may be required to perform one or two rarely needed functions...

Dave

You don't really need to, just right click on the funny window thing at the left hand end on the task bar and its there. If you open it this way you can pin it to the task bar..

Dave

The last time I played with Disc Management it was on a Windows 7 PC, and that was a slightly different presentation where the physical drive was the unit and the separate partitions on the disc were arrayed along it. Windows 10 makes it more difficult to identify which partitions are together on which physical media. In the information below I have assumed that C and H are on one drive and D and E are on the other. It could alternatively be C and D on one drive and E and H on the other. The exact location of H isn't going to interfere with making H usable.

This is a Windows oddity. Disc C is a partition on a 2TB hard drive. Disc H is the remainder of the space in a named partition on Disc C's hard drive though it says "raw" so it has been named but it hasn't been formatted.

Go into Disc Management and format Disc H and it will then be usable.

From the look of the sizes, E looks as though it is intended to be a backup to C and H is the right size to be a backup of D, though you don't have to use it for that if you don't want to.

They still are, e.g. Bert's machine shows five physical disks (0 to 4), most have only a single partition, except disk 1, which has three partitions, only one of which has a drive letter assigned (C).

Just locate that file in %windir%\system32 and right-drag it to mke a shortcut

There have been virtually no changes in the Microsoft Management Consoles since they were introduced in Windows/2000. Disk Management has always had two panels. A list of "Drive Letters" at the top, which are not Drive Letters but partition mappings, and a list of physical drives.

I also note that virtual drives which are created by the subst command are not shown

Dave