You might encounter a situation where the total available storage on your SD Card, USB drive or external HDD is slashed just suddenly. This might happen when you tamper with the storage device's partition table. This guide will explain how to resolve this issue by recovering the hidden partition(s)
Spotting the problem
Once you connect the storage device to your PC and check under My Computer (or This PC), you'll find that the total storage space will be significantly smaller than the original size of the storage device; like in the screenshot below:
In the screenshot above, the flash drive is actually an 8 GB flash but what you see there is 999 KB free of 0.97 MB. Even right-clicking the storage and checking properties reveals the same statistics.
Affected SD Card, USB drive or external HDD connected to PC
Steps to recover hidden or missing storage volumes on an SD Card, USB drive or HDD
Follow the steps below to restore hidden storage volumes in Windows
Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard and select Launch Application
At the MiniTool dashboard, you should see the true size of the storage device. Highlight and right-click the affected storage then select Wipe partition(s)
At the Wiping Disk or Partition wizard, leave the default settings and click OK
Click Apply at the top left corner then Yes when prompted to confirm Applying Changes
The partition should appear as Unallocated, highlight it then click Create Partition on the left
Set File System to FAT32 (for SD card / USB drive) and NTFS for external HDD. Set Partition Label to whatever you want (its set as Hovatek in this example) . Leave all other settings as they are then click OK
Click Apply at the top left corner
Click Yes when prompted
Wait while the new partition is created
You should get a Successful prompt once done
The true size of the storage device should now be displayed
This post was last modified: 10-06-2018, 12:15 PM by hovatek.
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