I'm using Windows 8.1. Using a brand new 1TB hard drive, I attached it to a SATA to USB connector, formatted it and transferred about 500GB of data to it. I don't remember if I formatted it as GPT, I assume that I did.
Now I've moved it into my Lenovo Y500's hard drive caddy to be used as a data drive. (This is the same laptop/OS used for the USB connection.) When I turned on the laptop I noticed that I didn't have a D:. I checked in Disk Management and found that the drive now says Healthy (GPT Protected Partition)
. Practically all of the right-click options are grayed out, including Change Drive Letter
.
Side note: I have an SSD being used as the OS/boot drive which is assigned to C:. So this D: is only going to be used for data.
I checked in DISKPART and this is what it shows for Disk 1:
WDC WD10JPVX-22JC3T0
Disk ID: B5CAC984
Type : SATA
Status : Online
Path : 2
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1F02)#ATA(C02T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No
There are no volumes.
I read online that I might be able to convert the partition from GPT to MBR to get rid of the problem without losing all my data. But I'm uncertain the steps that I need to take or if this is even the right path to clear us this problem.
I downloaded gdisk for Windows and this is what it says for Disk 1:
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present
Creating new GPT entries.
...stuff
Are you SURE you want to continue? (Y/N):
Should I proceed? What commands are needed after that to fix this issue and let Windows use the drive?
Update
I tried using gdisk with Recovery
then Convert GPT to MBR
but this wiped the partition so all the data was deleted. As suggested, I backed up everything first by plugging the drive back into the USB (where the data was still accessible) and copying the files onto a network drive. If you try gdisk, definitely do the same if possible.