Recovering Unallocated and Locked Hard Drive Volumes (Win7 and XP tools)

[@chrissywilcox9162]

For those of you who are having trouble with partitioning anything above a 2TB You need to right click on the volume in the column on the left hand side of the Disk Management screen and then click "convert to GPT disk"

[@chrissywilcox9162]

You may have to delete the current volume if the option doesn't appear Chrissy Wilcox

[@PhantomHT1320]

Chrissy Wilcox bingo bango, that was what i needed, thanks dood. - "convert to GPT disk"

[@1940Rorschach]

Chrissy Wilcox FUCK ME MAN!!! WHER CAN I SEND YOU 5 BUCKS BRO.! I have been up 4 hours trying to fined this simple stupid answer. GOD DAMN MAN!. THANK YOU! hope life treats you well.

[@chrissywilcox9162]

all is good.. just pass the info forward.. it took me damn near as long to find the answer myself!! lol

[@alfonsomuro7664]

Chrissy Wilcox men thanks :D

[@Patricklittle92]

Nothing else worked for my computer to find and display my USB drive. Thank you so much.

[@Ointment3d]

This was really helpful. Had a 128gb thumb drive that I wanted to use as a Windows recovery drive. Not knowing that Windows formats the drive into a fat32 format and leaves the rest of the drive as unallocated, left me researching the Internet for hours trying to fix it....until I came across this video. Problem solved after just a few minutes! Really appreciate all the help. Thanks a lot!

[@alanhermenegildo2028]

Yo man it works, I was just about to format my drive thinking that it was infected by a malware or virus. Glad I found this video of yours. Thanks a lot. 2 Thumbs Up!

[@Jhyzone]

Hi. After following the steps on this video did it delete all data after formatting the drive? Just curious to know. Thank you.

[@palito4148]

anything that says or involves "formatting" with hard drives, it deletes all files in it

[@padamtamang1562]

Thank you so much. You saved my 1TB external drive.

[@davidhiggins715]

Hey there! I just wanted to add my thanks on top of everyone else's - I had some USB drives that weren't playing nice and the GUI wasn't letting me clear the volumes. This video gave me everything I needed to get the job done :)

[@raininggently]

Thank you BOTH so much @1738 Creations and @Chrissy Wilcox! I'm not very techy, but between your clear instructions, I've successfully saved my WD My Book! Woo hoooooo!

[@rogerflaps36]

Had to use the delete volume override feature which worked a treat,so thank you very much my friend.

[@Bill_Woo]

This led me to the answer - I am grateful - but not exactly as described in the video or comments. I had gray on everything. diskpart was useless. Then I discovered LIST DISK and SELECT DISK 1 in diskpart. From there - BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL, ONLY PROCEED IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING - use CLEAN instead of DELETE. This virginalizes the entire physical drive - in my case, drive 1 (since drive 0 has C: and more). Then you can initialize and do everything else you want in Disk Management.

[@Bill_Woo]

In my case, I had innocently clicked 'yes' to allow Intel to create a RAID disk of my drive 1 (I should have said 'no' for my purposes), and had to go to BIOS and nervously undo that. That left me with, on drive 1, a rescue partition, a copy of drive C: made by the RAID process, unallocated space (1 or 2 TB) that I COULD make into a drive(but not expand), and unallocated space (3 TB) that I could do absolutely nothing with. At that point I proceeded with diskpart for CLEAN. In all of these operations, I and you should proceed tremendously carefully, like you're handling dynamite.

[@Bill_Woo]

One other note, the 11 G recovery partition made by the RAID, copied from drive 0 to drive 1, was somewhat indestructable. diskpart crashed when attempting to delete that volume. Then I solved both that, and rescuing unallocated space, with CLEAN.

[@coreyicybones2503]

+Bill Woo I was struggling big-time until I saw your post... Thank you SOOOO much! List Disk and Clean was the only successful method for me.

[@dalem7504]

I just saw this even though it was posted over 3 years ago. I used the technique you showed to save a 4 TB hard drive that I had tried everything to recover, include Spinright. Thank you.

[@1738Creations]

Thanks for all the comments. Considered not uploading it as I wasn't sure the video would have been of use. Glad it's not just me who had this problem!

[@LeTetSpiN]

1738 Creations My friend gave me his old EX 2TB, said if I can get it to work I could have it. @2:11 made it all happen Thank you, your the best!!

[@LeTetSpiN]

+Roblox, Thexicuiter Just a shot in the dark... it might need to be reformatted for your OS sense it's showing to be active.

[@MrSawayaa]

+1738 Creations awesome video dude thanks tons

[@boalialaimi1764]

thx to you

[@sillyladtan]

I just wanted to personally thank you so much for this video. I've been looking into trying to do this for a while now and not a single site pointed out that you could do this perfectly fine without the need of additional software. The last thing I need is more junk on my machine, it's infuriating how deceptive they can be. Anyway, thanks again and have a great day!

[@musicaman68]

Thanks a milliom. I was able to save some HDDs that were going to be thrown away. This video tutorial is awesome.

[@jamrockax61]

You sir, are absolutely appreciated!!!!! Thank you very much.....!!!!!! Also, if you have more than 2TB, after you delete all volumes using diskpart, right click on the drive (the square that says Disk 3 in this example) and click "convert to GPT"

[@PreserveOurParadiseOrg]

Thank you thank you thank you. I have been struggling with my C drive getting full and having all this extra space on the D drive. I backed up all of the data on the D drive and then followed your instructions and now I have all this space on the C drive. Thank you so much.

[@vaffanculo924]

Thanks. After recovering data from the old HDD, I needed to clear it. I have a hunch that it became unallocated because it was a hard drive from XP.

[@Kyler-.-]

I feel like I tried this when I first came across this problem a couple of months ago, but now that I ran out of disc space on my SSD and needed my HHD to work I really appreciate the video and help. Works for windows 10 as well if anybody wanted to know.

[@jonlivingston4430]

Thanks for the video. I was able to rescue my unallocated space on a USB drive without downloading more software by using what's already in Win 7.

[@achowdhurysblog5595]

I had the same problem. I solved mine by simply right clicking the 'Disk 3*' and clicking 'Convert to MBR Disk'. It worked for me. * Whichever number is assigned to the disk.

[@samjithms4088]

I have similar issue with one of my drive. I resolved it by watching this video. Thanks Bro...

[@Sacheen]

THANKYOU SO MUCH!!! I had a USB drive that was stuffed up and tried ages to fix it using disk management but it didnt work, now u saved me thanks! Liked and faved!

[@JEGsGarage]

Perfect! Using the command prompt tool I was able to get the space back and the drive works perfect! One of the best videos I found!

[@Jhyzone]

Did you lose all data in the drive after formatting the drive?

[@JEGsGarage]

It was a drive that was previously used, and I formatted it as a second drive. Half of it was locked up, and this made it all available. So I cant say if it would remove data...but any time formatting is involved it usually involves data loss. Dont take my word for it though.

[@Bill_Woo]

All should note the comment below by +Chrissy Wilcox explaining that you may need a "GPT disk." This is flatly required for me to go over 2T on my Win 7. It was gray for me in disk management, but I "CLEANed"' the disk and reinitialized in Disk Management to set up the volume(s) from scratch. It presented the choice of MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (and by the way MBR was pre-selected). If you are over 2T, choose GPT.

[@david-portillo]

Thanks man you saved me a lot of time researching

[@itsM4D1S0N]

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!! I was wondering what had happened to my 2 TB hard drive then I found this video and now I love you!!

[@21NoviSad]

Thank You! You are the King! All the best!!!

[@rogersneddon2051]

Thank you so much. I've spent all bloody day trying to sort this.

[@whitelight2003]

Nicely Done. It has been a long time working on storage and I forgot about "override" parameter. Thank you.

[@Slade328]

Thank you soooo much man!! It took me forever to get my storage space back.

[@DennisEvansG]

Great Video, have used this in the past but had forgotten all about it till your Video, now I have a properly functioning HD I can now clone my older HD to. Everything worked great. Thanks...

[@navold93]

you've literally saved my life! least thing i can do is THANK YOU.. Very much.

[@dindzbartolabaciii8738]

you made my day bro.... i dont know how to delete it but this one help me a lot thank you very much

[@ThatIssyGirl]

Hey thank you so much for this video. I am a exhausted and not sure if you warned that your data would be deleted upon completing this as mine is not empty. A - did you warn me because if you did I need more sleep then i realize. B- any tips on recovering data or is it all gone?

[@mercybaldelovar9061]

hi sir can i have a question did the files have been deleted when you delete the volume?thanks

[@sakusight649]

THANK YOU SENPAI. My externel hard drive that my uncle bought me as a chritmes gift work now again THANKS

[@heemanOO7]

Thanks a lot for the help.i searched in the net before for the solution but did not find anything.But finally your video did it...

[@jromeroevo]

Awesome! I thought I bricked my usb drive thanks a lot for the tutorial.

[@FairuzSelamat]

Hye, I have a hardisk that barely use. The pot is broken. I havent use it since 3 years ago. I Changed the case and is said all the space is unallocated. Seems like the hardisk is totally empty. is it possible?

[@HystericalHyena]

I searched around for like fucking 2 hours trying to figure out how to do this, thank you

[@roccos2660]

THIS VIDEO SORTED MY PROBLEM STR8 AWAY THANKS ALOT BRO !!!

[@BMS29]

I fixed my external drive with this command. Thanks a lot!

[@starwolf2125]

My options are greyed out and I cannot choose to delete my volume cause the volume itself is a 3T HDD from which im using 2 (almost full) and the 1 TB is unallocated. Is there any way to unlock it without destroying my 2TBs of data? :/

[@katiewarman1051]

Your video was REALLY helpful. Thanks!

[@samhenley613]

Used this on Windows 10 and it worked perfect, thank you.

[@1738Creations]

Thanks. It helps when people comment as to what systems it works on. Especially when most Microsoft systems are set to auto update and Microsoft don't warn anyone as to what they've changed and things start breaking!

[@Trumpoli]

Thx for the vid really helps a lot May I ask where did u learn this from?

[@1738Creations]

Combination of MSDN and about 13 years of testing experience. I'm a game tester. Very busy, technical and underpaid job. Which is why I can't respond to the majority of comments. Either working, sleeping or trying to get more money. Takes a lot of reading but if you've got a spare machine you can test on, MSDN can be infinitely better than any of the misleading answers you'll find on StackOverflow. msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/ff794606(v=winembedded.60).aspx

[@Trumpoli]

Thx for the reply. I see then, im currently using windows on a mac so im finding as many technical guides as i can, ill try MSDN on my spare PC, which is still running duo core LOL. Anyway, thx for your guide and god bless you.

[@Montezuma99jj]

Thank you so much for uploading this. It was easy to follow and solved my problem.

[@MeherKrishnaTejaAppigatla]

Thanks a lot. It worked. I had this problem 'cause I used it on my friend's Mac without partitioning. And this helped. It being a new hard drive, I could format it. Thanks, for real.

[@abhishekkadupatil1539]

thanks 1738 Creations. your video just help me to recover my 100GB of unused memmory space.thanks a lot.

[@shmookins]

I found my old PC and wanted to see what files I had in the HDD just for a nostalgia trip. The old PC doesn't work and I plugged in the old HDD inside it into my current computer. But I need to format it to be able to use it. I want to see what files are in it first before reformatting. Any idea what to do? My current PC (Win10) tells me to allocate the HDD, but that will format it. P.S. This old HDD is not the main HDD in the old computer so it doesn't have Windows installed on it. It is the secondary HDD used for family files, old programs and what not. P.P.S. The old computer had Win XP in its main HDD- which I have formatted it already Cheers.

[@devoncarman4196]

I have a 2TB WD Passport, the HD shows up in computer management as unknown, not initialized, and unallocated. When i right click on it "new simple volume" is greyed out and not an option. So when in DISKPART after the command "List volume" the drive does not show up on the list at all. Any help is much appreciated!

[@syltoy2745]

I wish I could speak with you. I'm trying to clone a SSD TO replace my IDE HDD. I was able to see it in disk mgmt, but unable to do anything to it. I went through your steps in DOS, but the disk doesn't show there at all. So, I'm trying to find a way to refomat it and start over to do the clone.

[@qerimbroshka3573]

Perfect. Thank You!

[@jordanfagan9877]

Thank you so much. This done exactly as described and I'm on windows to just to point out.

[@bambisentsho]

Just helped me in 2016 and I use Windows 10!! thank you

[@SteveBrownRacing]

Good call on the diskpart utility.

[@2EyesI]

Thanks man, I wrecked my dads SD and fixed it by doing this. Very helpful!

[@MrAntojin]

I have a big problem... when I type "delete volume" diskpart automatically stops working! It doesn't allow me to go any further.... Help please!

[@AM-uj3tw]

Thanks for great video. I'm facing a strange issue. When I attach my External drive(Seagate 1 TB) the icon in task bar pops up(which allows you to safely remove the media) but it doesn't show up in disk management as a volume (I only see disk0 which is my hard drive). I can see it in "device manager" under disk drives but even there when i click on properties, in volumes tab disk/type/status/partition style etc all shows "--". in diskpart also it doesn't show up. could you please suggest any solution?

[@MatHantu]

If i put do not format will i be able to recover data on my external hdd?

[@1738Creations]

It could? Never tried. Heard of others not being able to, but that's not saying it's impossible. The files are there you just need some way to build the allocation tables. So long as you don't create a new volume over the top. In theory if you just assign a new letter to a lost volume and run a chkdsk (maybe chkdsk /r) on it, Windows should repair the volume. I've never tried it so can't recommend, but if you're desperate that's an option.

[@1738Creations]

...so that question was bothering me all week. I had some spare time this weekend and did a bit of investigation. Surprisingly, it turns out the process does work. It may not work in all circumstances but in my tests I recovered all my files. Figured I'd make a video. You only need to see the last minute or so (check its description for the time). All I do is create a virtual disk, add some files, delete the volume, create a new volume (without formatting) and use chkdsk to restore the contents. I'm quite shocked that it worked to honest! kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpCVe3htgLdgobs

[@MatHantu]

1738 Creations thank you so much. I will check it out

[@moradelnafs]

Thank you so much for the video. When I type " list volume" the hard driver doesn't appear at all (All other hards or volumes appear but not this one). Yet, it appears in the Disk management as "Not initialized" and "Unallocated". When I try to initialize it, it says it can not because of I/O error. Can you help please?

[@gamerone9917]

please help me. my problem is the flash drive is not showing in my computer, but its showing in device manager. and its write protected. my flashdrive doesnt have any lock button. ive tried "regedit. diskpart attributes disk clear readonly, clean, create partition primary" and failed... i tried this and mine says "diskpart has encountered an error: the media is write protected. see the system event log for more information".... are there any other options to fix my flashdrive?... if youre reading this, thanks

[@iwebercise]

It worked for me, so Thank You so much for the help!

[@mynameismine0]

Hey, buddy, thanks a lot ......................................... really, this is so helpful & detailed ..... Thanks again & keep sharing your knowledge like this always. Thanks.

[@anallelyavalosotero708]

I'm having the same issues, the seagate is detected but I can't access it, I have an LG tv and it used to recognize the drive just fine and now it just says "loading....." I have a Seagate Wireless Plus (1TB), it shows next to drive C, not under but next to. I click on it, but it doesn't give me any options and it says "Correct, recovery partition." What should I do? Thanks in advance for the help guys.

[@matttj8929]

I have a 500 GB external hard drive originally formatted on a mac. I had used up about 35 GB of the drive while using it with the mac. I wanted to reformat the drive for my PC. I connected the hard drive to my PC but it could only be seen in disk management. The only option disk management provided when selecting the drive was "delete volume". So I deleted the volume and then reformatted my hard drive using the quick reformat option in disk management. My hope was after reformatting it for windows, disk management could provide me with more options to fix the drive because it could actually be read by windows now. That was not the case. The lost 35 GB was not listed anywhere under disk management. Just 200 MB listed next to 465 GB. So I opened up diskpart and deleted the 465 GB, no problems there. Then I tried to delete the 200 MB volume in diskpart but an error message came up. Diskpart shut down and the 200 MB went untouched. I have no idea what to do at this point. Can I even recover that 35 GB because I deleted the volume? Could I try reformatting the drive on mac? Maybe if reformatted on a mac it will include the 35 GB into one volume because the mac can read it. Then I can delete the volume on my PC and have the full 500 GB available for reformatting?

[@MrAntojin]

Help... i've tried almost everything. I have an external hard drive (Transcend StoreJet 25M3 1TB on a windows 8) and it won't appear anywhere. It's not unallocated, it's not locked, you can't find a partition of it and it doesn't appear on "disk volumes" with the command prompt. It's correctly connected to the computer (usb 3.0) and it charges. It works on my mac, but it doesn't work on this computer.... Any ideas? Thank you :)

[@SquallRanger]

I follow all the steps but at the end it says..."The format did not complete successfully" and i still can't use my WD My Passport 1TB. Please help me.

[@xeoneex]

I'm having a problem similar to this but unsure how to make the entire drive one whole partition since it's my only hard drive currently. I recently purchased 1 4 tb hard drive to replace my old 2 1tb drives. I don't have access to the old drives to fix this issue though. Anyway during the windows installation I tried to stop the install, but it just sat there. So I hard re-booted the computer. Now I have half a hard drive that's usable, the other half is unallocated and I can't combine it with the remaining partition to make it one solid 4tb drive again. It's in 2 unallocated spaces, 2tb and 1.6tb. I'm at a loss. I formatted my drive after installnig windows 7 the first time priorto looking up this solution. So I have to re-install windows 7 currently to get access to the tools to see if I CAN do this with only 1 drive, that is the win7 bootup.

[@xeoneex]

oh, I forgot to mention whenI attempt to partitionthe remaining 1.6 tb it gives me an error stating: Failed to create a new partition on th selected unused space ERROR 0x80042468

[@1973_HELLENIC_AIR_FORCE]

NICE TUTORIAL !! IS THE SAME FOR WINDOWS 10?

[@MrTenwisemen]

Horray its work!!! thank you very much Sir i am not good in a computer by watching this great usable video it really helps alot.

[@limbatdhaval]

i have same problem as this bt i have too many data on that hdd so if i do this will it delet all my data?

[@1738Creations]

Short answer, yes. Long answer is yes, but it's complicated. Unless you format a drive the data is never lost. Hard drives have tables which contain locations of the files. If a partition gets corrupted teh tables are almost always lost so the files are there but can't be accessed and the only option you're given is to format. There are applications which can try to rebuild the tables but there's no guarantee they will work. You may lose everything, but if it's already lost... thigns can't get much worse. If you've just accidentally deleted the partition table, you can try a simple recovery with (no guarantee this will work or you won't lose your files): kzbin.info/www/bejne/jpCVe3htgLdgobs

[@MrJnkle]

Awesomeness, it worked!! Thank you!

[@gjc76]

Thank you for making this video!

[@TheBulldogVlogs]

For me when I right click it comes up but not the volume thingy is grey I can't click on what do I do? Plzz respond?'

[@northdakota1134]

thank you !! i was having trouble with my micro sd card and this video saved the day !

[@Islam4ever2006]

Thanks for sharing this video. I'm hoping maybe you could help me out. I have a Toshiba 1TB external hard drive that two computers at home stopped recognizing. When I plug them in any USB the computers recognize something was plugged in and they show it as an external USB 3.0 drive but that's it. I can no longer access the files and the computers don't recognize it. My personal/business computer is the only one I can work with because I own it, the other is locked to my kids school so I can't do any troubleshooting there. My personal computer was recently upgraded to Win10 and a few days later my hard drive isn't recognized.Basically, I've tried all kinds of partition recovery and data recovery software and none of them helped. I even tried opening my hard drive and swapping the green chip (forgot its name) and replaced it with another adapter and it still doesn't recognize my external drive. I've read many forums/blogs and I'm still stuck.When I go into Disk Management, it locates my external drive as Disk1 unknown, and not allocated. When I right click on the right side area, all of the "volume" options are greyed out.

[@FurDaddyMaki]

Thank you men :) Really helps a lot

[@RSMith816]

TY TY TY!!! Almost gave up when I was unable to do anything under windows disk manager.

[@creativetweaking]

Thank you so much, you've helped a lot!!!

[@mr63249]

What happens if I have 4 hard drives. 2 seem to disappear. I get one back by assigning a letter in disk management. The other wont let me do anything. I can open the disk up in paragon hard disk manager/ volume explorer all my files still being intact. I go to command prompt only 3 of the volumes come up. I list disk all 4 disks show up. ANy solutions?

[@Eartheaters]

Thank you for the help, much appreciated! :)

[@Marklar1984]

Thx a lot helped me just bought a 2 TB hard drive and

[@abhishekkaushik8360]

Hi everything is good with your video but what do I do about the lost do? could it be recovered now after formatting? thanks in advance

[@araizashraf]

Nice but after new volume wizard setup as i click finish i got error there is not enough space on disk to complete this action any help

[@redtesta]

Just found video. Just off your "save lives stop wearing........" it was automatic sub....totally agree... Now, i need to watch the video lol

[@sudnifnatipac]

very clear and useful. Thank you!!

[@imranahmedhyd]

Thank You So Much Solve My Problem Good Work..!!

[@NoelAbhi1]

this totally worked for me! Thanks

[@dmw282]

Didn't work for me, the options for the unallocated space were all grey so I couldn't use them. any advice?

[@palamol]

hi thanks for the video , as soon as I plug the hard drive , I can not launch any recovery software programme , it hangs and as soon as I remove my hard drive , it pops ? What could be the issue ?

[@willman18696]

Good stuff! Lifesaver, thanks!

[@InvestorsClub4u]

Data error (cyclic redundancy check) my issue is that can you be please help me

[@ridicuze9065]

490fight same cant find a fix anywhere

[@vigneshpalanisamy7343]

Same here....pls let me know is you find any solution...thankyou :)

[@dotustm8926]

TY KZbin.... Another Win, this guy basically had a great guide to outsmart Windows. Cant believe I even hesitated that it was my Freshly built rig/setup stopping me. Fucking windows.

[@applejuice-4706]

Thanks so much! from 32GB back to 128 GB!

[@dehumanizerlord6225]

i think i fixed the drive but it says that i need to format it so i can use it. I have some files that i don't want to erase so is there a way to save them?

[@arslankiyani]

But in my case the external hard disk i plugged in is not showing up in the disk management section. When i plug it in, it initialize, detect and then it don't show up in my computer neither in the disk management but it shows it as detected. I have some important data on it and i don't want to lose it at all, Could you please help me in this regard? I shall be very thankful to you. Hoping to hear from you soon.

[@1738Creations]

I had an old 250GB drive which did the same thing, I figured it was dead. If it doesn't appear in disk management then, as far as I know, it's game over. Worth checking different USB ports or plugging it in another computer if you can. If your BIOS can detect USB drives then it may be worth a shot seeing if it appears in the BIOS. But that's all hoping for the best, I'd assume the drive is dead but the USB interface still works.

[@arslankiyani]

1738 Creations Well, thanks a lot for your response. Actually i got it working again. I opened it up and came to know that the drive is ok but there is some issue with USB interface. Therefore, i replaced it with the new casing and its working fine now.

[@JrTheRealKing]

thank you so much I really appreciate this, it worked like a charm for me

[@nahomseyoum]

I have 1Tb wd ultra my passport hdd but it only shows 37 Gb.And in disk management it shows 37GB in total and unallocated partion size doesnt appear?whats the problem of not showing the unallocated size?

[@fredcocofc]

thank u sooo much young blood,u really saved me from a lot if trouble,bless u buddy.

[@starmoon1698]

Omg im so grateful THIS HELPED MY LIFE THANKS SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!! If without your help, i could've looked for many days

[@olivieros.1324]

were you working with windows 10 or 7 ?

[@supercool645]

Hi i have WD Elements 1tb external now its unallocated, it shows the size of 2tb, red color downward arrow appears above offline. Can't go offline or create new partition. Kindly suggest any solution.

[@AxiomofDiscord]

thank you was skipping the delete volume step. I just don't have this problem often enough to remember everything i guess.