New WD 3TB hard drive only showing as 1.99TB Huh?

Soldato
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Just installed this drive, thought they sent me 2Tb by mistake at first but notice a lot of my drive is reporting unallocated?

Any advice on how to get it working?

Top drive
20120222_171446.jpg
 
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Soldato
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Is it something to do with needing to use GPT (and a motherboard that supports it) and the fact that MBR can only go up to 2.1 Terabytes?
 
Associate
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Thats because the maximum partition size for a basic NTFS partition is 2TB. You will need to go into windows disk management and make a second partition for the other 1TB. The other option would be to configure the disk as a GPT disk (as opposed to the standard MBR layout). Then you could have a full 3TB partition. There is plenty of info about this on google if you give it a search :). Try searching for something like "ntfs 2tb partition limit windows"
 
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Associate
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I have a Motherboard Asus P5Q-E.

If i buy a 3TB HDD and make 2 partitions (2TB + 1TB), i don't need to use GPT?

In that case, MBR works and i don't need to do anything more? Only partitioning as usual?

Thanks.
 
Associate
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have you not tried gigabyte 3tb unlocker?

http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/276/3tb.html

GIGABYTE 3TB+ Unlock optimizes HDD storage space by allowing the user to create a virtual drive with space that exceeds 2048GB, the maximum amount of storage recognized by 32bit versions of operating systems such as Windows XP. The virtual drives are limited to 2048GB, and the user can create up to 128 partitions, as long as there is additional unallocated space on the HDD. 3TB+ Unlock supports both GPT (GUID Partition Table) and MBR (Master Boot Record) partition styles, however with MBR the number of partitions are limited to 8.

3TB+ unlock
(Note) Support Intel X79/Z68/X58/P67/H67 series and AMD 900/800 series MB.
(Note) Please install 3TB+ Unlock Preinstall driver first before running 3TB+ Unlock utility.

OS:Windows XP 32bit,Windows XP 64bit,Windows Vista 32bit,Windows Vista 64bit,Windows 7 32bit,Windows 7 64bit
 
Caporegime
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5 Sep 2010
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I have a Motherboard Asus P5Q-E.

If i buy a 3TB HDD and make 2 partitions (2TB + 1TB), i don't need to use GPT?

In that case, MBR works and i don't need to do anything more? Only partitioning as usual?

Thanks.

To answer your query... Yes, absolutely right

Not exactly because the HDD will only show as ~2.73TB (technically TiB) in Windows.

See here for the difference between the SI unit of measurement used by HDD manufacturers and the binary system used by Windows.
 
Soldato
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19 Oct 2006
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3,708
have you not tried gigabyte 3tb unlocker?

He does not need this and does not have to do anything with his motherboard as he is using it as a storage drive.

Just convert it to GPT if you want a single partition the full size of the disk.
 
Associate
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Preston, UK
No 64bit affects the amount of RAM the computer can utilise but it has no bearing at all on the maximum size of Hard Disk that you can use.
I think the confusion arises because you have to have a 64bit operating system if you want to use a 3TB as your boot-drive, which is something a lot of people aren't aware of. I had some issues when I first installed a 3TB drive, as less than 2TB was showing (that wasn't the limit of the partition - the rest was literally missing), but changing from RAID to AHCI fixed it - took me a few Google searches to figure it out. It's a shame that there are any issues at all, as they should have been worked out years before it became an issue.
 
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