Samsung T5 500GB SSD only showing as 128mb when plugged into PC

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mortonman

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#303340 2-Feb-2023 20:28

My daughter has been using a Samsung T5 500Gb SSD for a couple of years now to supplement her hard drive on her windows PC. When she plugged in tonight it only shows up as full with a 128mb capacity.

Any suggestions to get it back to show the full drive?

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#3031059 2-Feb-2023 20:31

Suggest you run "computer management" and look in the disk section. That will show you partitions and such. Post the screenshot if you like.

mortonman

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#3031061 2-Feb-2023 20:41

Image from samsung magician

Not that used to partitioning.

lxsw20

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#3031065 2-Feb-2023 21:25

Intel SSDs used to do a similar thing when they died.

Mehrts

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#3031074 2-Feb-2023 21:37

I hope nothing important was on that drive.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3031084 2-Feb-2023 21:48

If there's anything really important, your best bet is to send it to a proper firm that knows what they're doing.

For DIY, there are tools available, but the first thing I would be doing is looking at the partition table on Linux (mostly because it's what I use...), and viewing SMART info.

It looks like the actual drive inside might be mSATA, so sticking it in a carrier and viewing it directly would rule out possible issues with the USB bridge.

OldGeek

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#3031123 3-Feb-2023 08:02

I would suggest running Windows Disk Management and posting the screen image. This will show a mapping of partitions in the physical drive (including unallocated space), and it is based on what Windows can see.

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mortonman

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#3031252 3-Feb-2023 12:37

OldGeek:

I would suggest running Windows Disk Management and posting the screen image. This will show a mapping of partitions in the physical drive (including unallocated space), and it is based on what Windows can see.

Will check tonight when i get home.

xpd

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#3031272 3-Feb-2023 13:23

Run HDSentinel as well, that will give you run time of the drive etc as well as lots of other drive info.

XPD / Gavin

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mortonman

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#3031581 4-Feb-2023 08:02

OldGeek:

I would suggest running Windows Disk Management and posting the screen image. This will show a mapping of partitions in the physical drive (including unallocated space), and it is based on what Windows can see.

mortonman

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#3031582 4-Feb-2023 08:10

Just remembered my daughter has a macbook. I suspect the drive is formatted for her macbook not her pc!

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#3031638 4-Feb-2023 09:12

mortonman:

Just remembered my daughter has a macbook. I suspect the drive is formatted for her macbook not her pc!

It says NTFS , which is Windows

Looking at the stats it seems she may have only created a 128GB partition... leaving the rest void

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#3031640 4-Feb-2023 09:20

Actually with that partition layout it looks like it's even bootable. Possibly an OS on it. No external drive ever has a EFI system unless something was installed on it.

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

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#3031641 4-Feb-2023 09:26

Shes been running Windows on her Mac ?

Is this her only drive in the Mac ?

For me, I'd just throw the thing into an external dock, copy off any files you need, then blow the thing away completely and start again.

XPD / Gavin

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SomeoneSomewhere

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#3031977 4-Feb-2023 21:02

So, good news, unlikely to be any kind of hardware failure; Windows has just had a bit of a fit.

It might have previously been used as a bootable drive or Windows might have just put an EFI partition on there for s**ts and giggles - wouldn't be the first time.

It's only the 126MB partition that is formatted NTFS. Windows isn't detecting the 465GB partition, which might mean the partition is formatted for Max (or Linux, or something else), the partition has been formatted/wiped/gotten broken somehow, or Windows just doesn't like it.

Strongly advise trying it on a Mac, and/or trying it on anything but Windows.

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#3031979 4-Feb-2023 21:08

Side note: Windows still does not support multiple partitions on external HDDs (including SSDs), and will not mount more than one partition. IIRC which partition it chooses to believe exists isn't really set in stone, and I'm not sure if it would show that there was a valid NTFS partition on Disk 1 Partition 2, even if there was.

If Windows decides that suddenly Partition 3 is the Chosen One, instead of Partition 2...

Once the data is recovered, I definitely second the suggestion to remove all the other partitions.

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