External HDD info is wrong

[klundermann]

I don't know how I did this, but I'm pretty sure it took some pretty sophisticated idiocy on my part....

I wanted to reformat 2 external HDDs. One of them was a 320-GB Hitachi. Everything went fine with that.

Then I reformated a 1-TB LaCie HDD. That seems to have worked too, except that whenever I plug it in I'm told that it is a 320-GB Hitachi HDD. Maybe I forgot to unmount the Hitachi before plugging in the LaCie? I don't know, but the question is, how to I get back the 680 GB of space that have gone missing? I've tried disks and gparted, but there seems to be no way of convincing them that the drive actually has a full terabyte of space.

I've also tried the Windows 10 disk-management tool, but no luck there either.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

[TheFu]

Did you create a new partition table (GPT), then create new partitions, then format with the file system type you want AND give the file system a "LABEL"?

BTW, don't bother with Gnome-Disks.

[yancek]

How are you 'told' that it is an Hitachi? Do you see this in your file manager? Do you see it under /media/username? What filesystem did you format it, ntfs? You indicate tried to change it in windows and that wouldn't do anything with a Linux filesystem. You indicate you 'tried' gparted, disks and windows Disk Management but give no information. Exactly what did you try to do? What happened when you tried to unmount the filesystem? Since you don't have any data on the drive the suggestion above to create a new partition table should do the job.

[klundermann]

Well, I just tried fdisk /dev/sdc and then ran commands g (which told me I'd created a new GPT disklabel) and then w to write the changes. disks still tells me it's a 320-GB Hitachi HDD.

[klundermann]

disks tells me it's a Hitachi 320-GB hard disk.

[TheFu]

disks tells me it's a Hitachi 320-GB hard disk.

Ignore "disks". Use gparted.

Is there any chance that you cloned 1 of the drives to the other?

[tea for one]

Attach both external HDDs
Identify the disks with this command:-

sudo parted -l

Then run this command for each external disk:-

sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 print free # Change nvme0n1 to your disk identity e.g. sda or sdb or sdc etc

Example below

redact@gmktec:~$ sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 print free 
Model: KINGSTON SA2000M8250G (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 250GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name  Flags
        17.4kB  1049kB  1031kB  Free Space
 1      1049kB  1075MB  1074MB  fat32              boot, esp
 2      1075MB  44.0GB  42.9GB  ext4
 3      44.0GB  76.2GB  32.2GB  ext4
 4      76.2GB  184GB   107GB   ext4
        184GB   250GB   66.4GB  Free Space

redact@gmktec:~$

My disk is nvme0n1, but, I suspect your external HDDs will be sda or sdb or sdc - change the command accordingly

Please post the output for each external disk within code tags

[yancek]

Well, I just tried fdisk /dev/sdc and then ran commands g (which told me I'd created a new GPT disklabel)

What commands? You have been asked a number of specific questions and respond with general statements. You are making note of the specific commands you run and their sequence as well as the result. That is what you should post not general statements. I asked earlier what happened when you unmounted or tried to unmount the drive filesystem and you have not responded. After using whatever commands you used with fdisk, did you reboot before checking 'disks' again and do you have only the Lacie drive attached?

[klundermann]

Is there any chance that you cloned 1 of the drives to the other?

Though I do not know how to clone a disk, I suppose it's possible I did it accidentally.

I presume that cloning entails not just partitioning and formatting the disks identically but also copying all of the data. In this case, it would have involved to copies, since I did not connect the two disks simultaneously. Especially since the LaCie has just a USB 2.0 connector, I would think that a full cloning would have taken quite a bit longer than that the total time that I had one disk or the other plugged into my laptop.

[klundermann]

Attach both external HDDs
Identify the disks with this command:-

sudo parted -l

Then run this command for each external disk:-

sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 print free # Change nvme0n1 to your disk identity e.g. sda or sdb or sdc etc

For the Hitachi, the result is:

Model: ST320LT0 07-9ZV142 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End    Size   File system  Flags
 1      0.00B  320GB  320GB  ntfs

For the LaCie, it's:

Model: Hitachi HTS545032B9A300 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdd: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End  Size  Type  File system  Flags

It seems really odd to me that parted print free shows the name "Hitachi" only for the LaCie drive, but I am certain I have correctly identified the drives: before plugging in the LaCie, I plugged the Hitachi in and ran parted -l, which told me that the Hitachi was /dev/sdc.