Possibly sold a bogus hard drive. Can anything be done?

Vitor

Before contacting either seller, check whether the disk partitioning is MBR rather than GPT. A 4 TB disk formatted as MBR commonly hits a wall at almost exactly 2 TB. Disk Management will show the physical disk capacity and partition style. Back up the encrypted containers before changing anything. If it is already GPT and a full write-and-verify test proves it cannot hold more than 2 TB, contact the identified business seller with screenshots and the test results. Four months is outside eBay’s normal 30-day guarantee, but not outside your statutory rights against a business seller.

NB This assumes the OP isn't running 32-bit Windows XP

B0bbyEwing

"Before contacting either seller, check whether the disk partitioning is MBR rather than GPT"

This was covered a few posts back.

And it's Windows 10 64 bit …. that bit wasn't covered.

B0bbyEwing

Hmm, I must've had a rare bright moment.

I've just popped open the hard drive enclosure & I've started to label my hard drives with a label machine as I tally them & what's on them in a spreadsheet as I have many TBs to sort through.

And I also put on the label that it was bought used & from theharddriveexperts.

So at least I know which seller it came from.

B0bbyEwing

Ok this gets weirder then.

I copied all data to another drive, so it didn't matter if this questionable drive went duff with the data.

I then started to write more data to it - and it's allowed me. Currently only 1.28TB free.

So why a 300GB Veracrypt container wouldn't create itself I don't know.

Speaking of Veracrypt, I've just had it randomly disconnect a mounted file. It was open for an hour or so & just now it's disconnected it & given me a bit of a telling for randomly disconnecting. Like hang on a sec pal, I wasn't even touching a mouse/keyboard at the time.

bob_a_builder

But you said earlier

"But FWIW when in disk management it says the capacity is 3726.01GB, NTFS, Basic Data Partition"

Thats defo more than 2TB ?
and matches what would be expected from a formatted 4TB drive

mta999

I think.the OP had problems copying a particular container or file to the drive which made them think (mistakenly) it might be a suspect drive

They have got around this by not copying that container and it seems to work fine now - at least that's the way I understand this

B0bbyEwing

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82071676#Comment_82071676

Yes I did say that earlier.

I'm not sure where your confusion is?

Everything I've said so far has been accurate as to what's happened, what I did & what was happening - hence me confused at your confusion.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82071903#Comment_82071903

I think you've possibly got it. My head is banging with this horrible heat so if I've misunderstood you then sorry but I'm struggling to think too much.

Just to clarify - let's say I've 2 drives. Drive 1 & Drive 2. Both 4TB

Drive 1 was what this whole thread is about.

I'd created 4x 500GB file containers with VeraCrypt which took it to 2TB. When I tried to create an additional file container it kept erroring at 13%. I figured 13% of 320GB put me at just about 2TB which made me wonder if the firmware had been flashed incorrectly.

I tried time & time again, set to large files, small files, it didn't work & kept erroring at the same point.

I then took drive 2.

I copied the contents of drive 1 to drive 2, just in case my next step corrupted anything.

I took some large files & copied these to drive 1. They copied fine - totally beyond the 2TB point, which made me think then that this can't be just a 2TB drive.

I deleted those copied files. So now Drive 1 & Drive 2 are the same.

I then used Veracrypt to create that file container I'd been constantly failing to create - but created it on Drive 2.

Once done I then copied it using Teracopy to Drive 1.

It worked.

Why Veracrypt wouldn't create it in the first place ….. I still don't know.

Veracrypt also seems to keep disconnecting randomly. I've just copied loads of files in to one of these containers - no problem, all good.

Go to do the same again in another container - worked ok for a while but then Veracrypt randomly disconnected. Or the drive did. The copy process then stopped.

CrazyHorse99

I would not be putting any files on there you don't want to lose if Veracrypt is dismounting the drive at random, you need to find out why that is happening.

Perhaps check event viewer for clues?

B0bbyEwing

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82071964#Comment_82071964

Yeah I'm not dealing with vital files here. And besides, now I've copied to another drive, if one goes bad then I have the other.