Is My Lost Ssd Space Irretrievable?

[Colmc54]

W7 installed on 250 OCZ SSD.
Decided to allow a W10 free upgrade. Upgrade failed after 2 days left on and online. Computer now up the spout.
Went for clean install. Got to the partition select screen and clicked on the partition on drive that W 7/10 abortion was on and deleted it. Warned all data would be lost but not that drive would shrink from 250Gb to 83Gb in perpetuity. Pressed enter.

I took the drive out and put it in another PC. BIOS said it was an 83 Gb drive. Went into Disk Manager same thing. Went into DISKPART same thing.

In hindsight maybe I should have formatted not deleted the drive it being an SSD not HDD but I don't think it was unreasonable to assume that deletion would lead to 250Gb of unallocated space not the 83Gb I would now appear to be stuck with! Or did Microsoft do something to the drive to protect the partition their *up was on causing it to to be permanently damaged?

I tried booting with DBAN and it too only recognised my disk as 83Gb.

Has anyone any suggestions as to how I can get my lost disk capacity back, and yes feel free to tell me it was my own stupid fault for being seduced by the 'free update' when I was perfectly happy with W7 in the first place!

[Old_Geezer]

Drives don't just shrink. Reformat the whole drive from scratch. There's probably a hidden partition nicking a chunk of it.

[Old_Geezer]

Having reread it us strange that the software doesn't see the whole drive. Could it have been compressed or something previously ?

[Colmc54]

Thanks for your reply.
No I don't think there were any hidden or compressed files or partitions. That's why I tried booting with Darik's Boot and Nuke. I don't think it discriminates concerning what's on there it just confirms the total capacity of the drive and asks if you want to wipe it.
If I get the chance I'll call Windows support on Monday. I bet they blame the drive though and not their 'free upgrade'!

[SlackAlice]

Suggest you try their support forums and raise a question there.

http://www.oczforum.com/forum/categories/arc-100

[pinkyboyid]

Do you have a Windows 7 or 10 installation disk available?

If you don't have a Windows installation Disk you can download and create a bootable Windows 10 DVD or USB from: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10

Then, try booting from the Installation disk and select the 'Repair your Computer' to access the Recovery / Advanced Options tool menu and select 'Command Prompt' option.

In the command prompt window run the DiskPart program and enter the following commands:

- Enter "List Disk"
- From the list of disks displayed note the 'Disk' number numeric
- Enter "Select Disk number" where number is the numeric you noted previously e.g. "Select Disk 0"
- Enter "Clean"
- Enter "Create Volume simple" (if this throws an error message, ignore it)
- Enter "Create Partition" and follow the instructions to set the partition size to maximum
- Enter "List Disk" to show the disk size, hopefully 250GB !

If the problem persists, another option is to consider updating your PC BIOS to the latest version by visiting your PC manufacturers support web page as suggested via OCZ support faq:- http://ocz.com/consumer/ssd-guide/ssd-faqs

[Colmc54]

Thanks but I am familiar with DISKPART and tried exactly what you suggested first off with no success.

[Colmc54]

Thanks. I tried the DISKPART solution at the start and the partition ended up 83Gb. I think the drive has shrunk for good unless Microsoft deign to unshrink it.

[TTG]

Just reinstall Windows 7 again and select the option that wipes the drive. Probably no need to format it.

[Colmc54]

DISKPART 'clean full' was the solution. However the disk capacity remained the same. The MB box had the packaging for a OCZ 250 GB SSD in it. OCZ ssds don't have the capacity of the drive on their upper surface. So finally I dismount the drive and remove it from the caddy. I turned it over and their it was, 90 GB capacity!
The box in the MB box was from an earlier MOD.
There is a moral to this tale but I'm sure you don't need me to tell you what it is! Merry Christmas.