WD Passport Ultra 2TB - space decreased from 2T to 32G

[GTR902]

Hi guys,

I decided to go for system recovery on my PC (windows 8.1) after many issues. The computer asked to connect an USB-stick or disc to save windows recovery files. I did my mistake and connected my portable hard disc to complete windows system recovering. Note that I had a lot of photos and videos saved on this hard disk.

Now when I connect the disc to PC (tried 2 PC), the space is only 32 GB instead of 2TB and I can not find my valuable photos and files. I have owned this device for less than two weeks and unfortunately did not creat any back-up yet.

Can anyone advise any way to hoppely get my files back or explain what is actually the main cause of the space decreasing?

Thanks in advance!

[jubei04]

Hello GTR902, welcome to the WD Community. Have you checked if the missing space is available on the disk management window? Check the link below for the steps on how to access it. 

How to access Disk Management in Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8 to manage hard drives

[DarrenHill]

I think Windows resizes/recreates the partition when it does this recovery file set-up (I’ve had it on a USB stick before).

Getting the disc space back is not too tricky (use something like Partition Wizard or a similar partitioning program), however getting the data back that was originally on the partition is a much more tricky proposition and something that I’m personally not sure of offhand (try a google search or something like that). But certainly don’t resize your partition back again until you’ve done such a check, as you could end up damaging any files that may remain on the now unused area of your disc.