External Hard Drive - Files Not Displaying

Hi,

I have an issue I'm having trouble figuring out. I have a 3TB external hard drive that shows just fine on a Windows 10 machine. However, on Windows 11, the drive shows but it doesn't show any of the files except $RECYLE.BIN and Temp. The total capacity it shows is 99.9MB. However, when I scan the drive using a data recovery app, it shows all the files but they are not in the original folder structure, it's all random and identifies the source as a Lost Partition. I've made myself the owner of the drive. How can I get the folders and files in this drive to display normally on Windows 11?

Drive as shown in Windows 11:


Data Recovery Results:

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Is it possible that you simply don't have a drive letter assigned to that partition in Windows 11?

If you could provide a screenshot from disk management, that would be very helpful.

Follow-up:

As an example, if you look at the screenshot below, note that the large partition on the single drive in this laptop has a drive letter C: assigned to it.

My bet is that the large partition on the drive in question has no letter assigned. To correct this, simply right click the graphical representation of that partition and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths".

So, when I look at the Disk Management, it actually shows 746.42 to be unallocated, which isn't at all accurate. I tried reassigned the drive letter but it everything looks the same.

Okay, unallocated is not correct. I was expecteing to see a partition there that simply didn't have a drive letter unassigned, not unallocated space.

Since this is an external drive, any chance you could simply reconnect to the Windows 10 system and show me what disk management sees there? I'm hoping that you still have the Win 10 system :).

EDIT: Are we sure the drive is in the same enclosure when connected to both the Win 10 and 11 systems? You said that this was a 3 TB drive. If that is true, whey is only 700 some odd GB of space being shown unallocated? Something is off base here.

Just a thought. I don't know enough about this topic to speak to all the details. But it almost sounds like it might have to do with an issue of newer drives that have 4k advanced formatting. Could you tell me a little bit about the Win 10 and 11 systems? How old are they, do you exact model numbers, if home-built systems, what motherboard models?

A note: the External USB HDDs I've worked with that seemingly failed were still good but the USB interface in their case had failed. The formatting wasn't NTFS but something else, maybe exFAT and the interface interpreted from which type OS was in use, my 2 x 4TB WD My Book HDDs came as exFAT and the package said it was for PC and Mac OS.

hsehestedt said:

Something is off base here.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the numbers don't compute to 3 gb. Something else that doesn't add up is you selected F: partition in the tree which is a 100 mb reserved partition. Reserved partitions of that size haven't been around in a long time. I would be willing to bet you deleted the partition where the data resided. Recovery software can still find files as long as they have not been overwritten. However, you can not open the files from the drive from within Windows itself.

Thank you for the help everyone! I feel like at this point it's worth just exporting the files to another drive instead of trying to figure out a solution with Windows 11. The files are all there, just unorganized.

By unorganized do you mean File Explorer sees the file but they are not listed in any particular order? The columns in the right-hand panel have a title at the top such as Name, Size, Date, Type, etc. Each of those names can be clicked to reorganize as desired, alphabetically or numerically.

Balahkay said:

Hi,

I have an issue I'm having trouble figuring out. I have a 3TB external hard drive that shows just fine on a Windows 10 machine. However, on Windows 11, the drive shows but it doesn't show any of the files except $RECYLE.BIN and Temp. The total capacity it shows is 99.9MB. However, when I scan the drive using a data recovery app, it shows all the files but they are not in the original folder structure, it's all random and identifies the source as a Lost Partition. I've made myself the owner of the drive. How can I get the folders and files in this drive to display normally on Windows 11?

Drive as shown in Windows 11:
View attachment 27015

Data Recovery Results:
View attachment 27017

Click to expand...

System Reserved tells me that's part of your Windows installation, not an external drive; IOW, when Windows (10 or 11) is installed, a couple or three extra small partitions are created on Drive 0 to hold Microsoft stuff.

I would think that for some odd reason, your external 3 TB Drive isn't showing up. I see no indication of a drive that large on your system.

After looking again, I see that there's a large amount of unallocated space, but not nearly enough for that to be the external drive you're referring to.

Is there a chance this machine is being dual booted?

Something is really not right here. There is no sign of a 3TB drive.

Also to see all of a 3TB drive, it needs to be formatted as UEFI not mbr.



Many people do not realise some pre-built external usb use a proprietary os on drive (usually linux) based, and usb interface electronics convert to ntfs.



If drive 2 is supposed to 3 TB, I suspect something has failed in interface electronics, and corrupted mbr big time. I know ot is mbr as prsence of system reserved partition.

Only option is to put drive in s new caddy and see if it reads ok but odds are very low.

Maybe someone can clear up my thinking on this. IMO, the presence of a 100 MB partition on this drive marked as system reserved makes me think the drive is an old Windows 7 MBR installation drive.
I have not seen Windows 10-11 install with a partition marked 'system reserved.' They install with a 100 mb partition marked 'system partition'.
I think he has taken an old installation drive that had windows 7 on it, put it in an enclosure as was, and then deleted the old OS partition resulting in the unallocated space.

That drive plugged into any machine is not going to be readable (except with recovery software)and it was never a 3 tb drive.

glasskuter said:

Maybe someone can clear up my thinking on this. IMO, the presence of a 100 MB partition on this drive marked as system reserved makes me think the drive is an old Windows 7 MBR installation drive.
I have not seen Windows 10-11 install with a partition marked 'system reserved.' They install with a 100 mb partition marked 'system partition'.
I think he has taken an old installation drive that had windows 7 on it, put it in an enclosure as was, and then deleted the old OS partition resulting in the unallocated space.

Click to expand...

I think you're right, the 100MB on mine from '15 that came with Win8 Pro then Upgraded to Win10 Pro is an EFI System Partition.

Hi @Balahkay

Here is another user who had the same problem 3TB HDD showing only 746 GB Unallocated in Windows 11 He took the easy way out. He simply downgraded to Windows 10

I am not going to say that but here is the easy way you can try. Do not run any data recovery program that will not show your folder and file structure in Windows 11 and copy that nameless files.

Was the disk a system disk on another PC earlier and you put it inside an enclosure and made it a USB drive? That may be the root cause to your problem. The following suggested solution will apply only in that case.

Plugin your 3TB external into a Windows 10 PC (which shows your drive normal as 3TB), copy all folders and files to another external disk. Keep aside this external disk.

Check whether your 3TB external is an MBR drive or GPT drive. If it is a GPT drive, run a diskpart cleanall on the 3TB disk (that was a system disk earlier) on your Windows 10 PC..

Plugin the disk now on your Windows 11 PC initialise as GPT, create a simple volume and format it as NTFS. Check whether it works now on Windows 11 ( try copying and deleting some files).

I kinda remember reading somewhere that the maximum size for an MBR drive is 2TB. I have 2 x 4TB USB drives attached that are GPT and 1 x 1TB USB drive that is MBR. All are single partition formatted as NTFS.

Berton said:

I kinda remember reading somewhere that the maximum size for an MBR drive is 2TB. I have 2 x 4TB USB drives attached that are GPT and 1 x 1TB USB drive that is MBR. All are single partition formatted as NTFS.

Click to expand...

True that MBR drives can only address and access upto 2TB. That is the MBR limitation.

If one had used a larger than 2TB external drive ( say a 3TB or 4TB or higher external drive) with Windows XP, then it is an Advance Formatted MBR drive.

In advance formatting eight native 512 bytes/sector is combined into a 4096 byte (8X 512 bytes) physical sector. That way MBR can access upto 2TB X 8 = 16TB drives. Such advanced formatted drives that were used with XP and later in Windows 7 also, use a special drive translation circuit in the SATA to USB bridge circuit which converts the 512 byte incoming stream into, into 4096 byte stream and writes it to the 4096 byte /sectror physical sectors into the HDD. While reading, the 4096 byte stream coming out of the HDD is reconverted into 512 byte stream and presented to the OS. When Windows XP reached EOL, manufacturers stopped producing these advance formatted high capacity external drives and transitioned into GPT. The story here
Transition to Advanced Format 4K Sector Hard Drives | Seagate US

Transition to GPT: Expansion drives switching to GPT | Seagate Support US

The Advance Formatted High capacity external drives are still being used by many users ( especially those who transitioned from Windows XP and Windows 7,.8) and when it comes to data recovery,, it is imperative to ascertain whether it is an MBR drive or GPT drive.

Here is a data recovery story from an Advanced Formatted 3TB WD Elements MBR drive Hard Drive seems corrupt. 1 Partition now showing as 3 Partitions? - Windows 10 Help Forums (The OP contacted Tech Support Partition Wizard and as per their advice converted it from MBR to GPT. I chided the OP , asked him to reconvert it to MBR and use TestDisk to perform the software drive translation from 4096 byte stream to 512 byte stream and he successfully recovered all data)