The USB drive by Western Digital is the My Passport series, for Windows 7, NTFS formatted. It shows, and I've rechecked a half dozen times and looked for hidden files, that total capacity is 465 GB (taking the smaller number) and, for each folder (taking the largest number and even rounding up) the used space should be 160 GB, leaving about 305 GB. Yet Internet Explorer shows these two numbers reversed (almost, it shows 300 GB and 165 for used and free, respectively). Why? As best I can tell, somehow the partition tables or what not are screwed up. I'm pretty confident, having checked a dozen times, my eyes are not playing tricks on me.
I'm mildly curious to fix this, but if I reformat, I'll lose the excellent 'encryption' tool that comes with every Western Digital external USB HD, that makes it impossible to access the drive unless you enter a password (I think the program is called 'WD Unlocker').
What tools can I use to diagnose? Preferably free? I did check the online articles taking about 'shadow' folders and what not, but they would only explain about 10% of the difference. This is a huge difference.
RL

Summary :

The USB drive by Western Digital is the My Passport series, for Windows 7, NTFS formatted. It shows, and I've rechecked a half dozen times and looked for hidden files, that total capacity is 465 GB (taking the smaller number) and, for each folder (taking the largest number and even rounding up) the used space should be 160 GB, leaving about 305 GB. In addition to what just mentioned, we list other common causes to help you understand why your (external) hard drive is showing the wrong capacity or free space. The hard drive driver is out of date. In this case, the hard drive might show the wrong capacity in the Windows computer. Hard Drive Showing Wrong Free Space Windows 10 Can you imagine this situation? When you want to install a new application, the disk in your system shows there is high space utilization. But after checking the actual volume occupied by the apps and files inside the hard drive, you find there are not much-used space.

Sometimes, you might find that some files are not showing up in the external hard drive. In the following contents, we will discuss about the possible causes and solutions, as well as an effective and reliable way to recover data for the external hard drive.

External Hard Drive Showing Wrong Capacity

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Problem – Files Not Showing in External Hard Drive

Although external hard drives have brought as great convenience in daily life and work, there are chances that they might fail to display some of their files or even seem to have lost them completely, despite the disk capacity in disk properties being shown as utilized.

You will be able to tell that it is indeed your files utilizing that space in the external drive if you have a general impression of how much space your data occupies.

Restore External Hard Drive Capacity

But here is the problem - people sometimes find their files not showing in external hard drive and get anxious; they are afraid of losing the important files forever. What is really happening when this issue is present? Can you fix it or rescue the missing data here?

I will answer those questions for you. Now, let's start with rescuing files missing from external hard drive with MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

When data recovery is done, I will explain the possible causes for files not showing problem and then give corresponding solutions. In the last section, I am going to help you know more about the external hard drive you use.

Recover Data from External Hard Drive

When you finally discover that some files are missing from external hard drive or even a partition in it is damaged/lost, you must conduct data recovery on external hard drive right away.

In this case, please stop writing any new data into the external hard drive and then follow the operations below to recover data with MiniTool Power Data Recovery easily. This software will light the hope of data recovery as long as the external hard drive is not physically damaged.

Tip: Please read Recover Files From Dead External Hard Drive With Actionable Way carefully if your external hard drive has become dead/corrupted.

3 Steps to Recover Data from External Hard Drive

When you find that some useful files not showing in external hard drive are actually lost, please adopt MiniTool Power Data Recovery immediately.

Then, follow this tutorial to recover data.

Step 1: connect the external hard drive to computer. Launch MiniTool Power Data Recovery, and then choose Hard Disk Drive.

High Capacity External Hard Drives

Step 2: select the target external hard drive from the right side and click on the Scan button.

Note: If your external hard drive is not shown here, please turn to External Hard Drive Doesn't Appear - How To Fix & Recover Data to find out the possible reasons.

Step 3: during the scan, you can see more and more files being found by the software. Now, you can browse them one by one to check the ones you need and then choose a safe location to store them by pressing the “Save” button. After that, click on the OK button to confirm your selection. Soon, the data you choose will be recovered to the appointed location.

Please note that if you’re using the trial edition, you’ll see the following interface that prevents you from saving any of the found files.

When you can confirm that all data you need are recovered successfully to another device and all the existing files have been backed up, you can choose to format the external hard drive in order to use it again. Additionally, you may follow the methods given below to try to fix the current external drive.

How to fix when external hard drive stops working?

A relatively comprehensive analysis & fix plan about external hard drive not working issue are given here to help people get out of trouble.

Why Can't See Files in External Hard Drive & How to Solve

I find files missing from external hard drive become a frequently discussed issue in many forums. So there must be some ideas that catch the point.

Based on this, I decide to make a list of the possible reasons and useful suggestions for users to refer to. Here, I have summarized 4 main causes as well as the solutions in Windows 7 through internet searching and actual operations.

4 Causes That Can Be Fixed Directly in Windows

The files are hidden.
There are file system errors.
The “CheckedValue” is suffering from virus infection.
The mirror image in memory is damaged.

Possible cause 1 – the files are hidden.

Sometimes, the files are not really missing from external hard drive; they’re just hidden and not being shown. Here are 4 solutions to unhide them.

Solution 1:

Type cmd to the search box and press Enter.
Right click on the exe and select Run as administrator.
Input DIR/A x:-s (x refers to the drive letter of your external hard drive). The meaning of this command is: list the non-system files in x: drive.
If this command returns nothing, it means your folder has been marked as protected system files, and then you can refer to the second solution.

Solution 2: check whether the files are endowed with system property.

Run control folders, or go to Control Panel and Appearance and Personalization.
You can see the window Folder Options.
In view tab, check show hidden files, folders, and drives and uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended).
Then check whether the files/folders are there.

Tip: If the checkbox is not optional, you can run 'cmd', and input 'attrib -H -S X:folder name /s /d' (X: means the specific drive letter of the external hard drive and can be replaced by D:, E:, F: etc.) Then press 'Enter' to make it optional. Please pay attention to the space between the commands.

Solution 3:

If your files keep missing from the external hard d drive, run cmd and press Enter key.
Then, if the hard drive letter is O:, you should enter this command: attrib -h -r -s /s /d o:*.*.

External Hard Drive Showing Wrong Capacity