[Windows Server 2008 R2] Disk showing as 100mb

Flying_Hellfish · 19 Jan 2015 at 19:57

Evening all,

I've got a 4TB disk drive on Win08 R2 which has developed an issue. Showing in "computer" as "0 bytes free from 100 MB". In disk management it appears fine however and I can still open files from it (I just can't change/add).

I have full NTFS permissions over this disk.

I have also ran chkdsk /f on it with no issues.

I'm currently backing up data from it, I assume something is amiss with the GPT or something? Any other fixes you guys can think of?

JonnyT · 19 Jan 2015 at 23:35

Sounds like only the first partition is visible. Since Windows Vista/Server 2008 R1 the setup creates a 100MB System Reserved partition at the start of the disk, which is usually used for storing Bitlocker keys.

Try running DISKPART from a command prompt (cmd) and do LIST VOL. You should see several volumes, possibly including CD/DVD drive. It's possible that the main data partition has not got a drive letter.

Flying_Hellfish · 20 Jan 2015 at 09:23

Nah it's not that, unfortunately. The 100mb is on the SSD which is the main disk drive. The disk has been working absolutely fine up until now (this is a media server with multiple hard disks).

All data is almost backed up now so I'll reformat it and see if that fixes it.

Flying_Hellfish · 22 Jan 2015 at 16:50

In the end, I managed to shrink the partition E (which was the main partition) down to create I:, then move data across and delete E: before resizing I:.

This seemed to be an issues with the OS not recognizing the partition within Explorer only, as mmc/disk management and MiniTool both saw the partition correctly. This was a large disk as I said so uses GPT, may be a quirk of this design so I will keep tabs on it.

If anyone else has the same problem and reads this, first step would be to check mmc or MiniTool. Chances are your data should be fine (and recoverable).