3TB drives in Windows not showing 3TB! (SOLVED)

wedmonds

wedmonds

wedmonds

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13 Nov 2007
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231
Hi People,

I thought I would post this up as it may help many of you.
It actually effects 2.2TB and up but my experience was with a Western Digital 3TB drive.

Only showing 2.2TB instead of 3TB
So i purchased a 3TB drive for storage of video files etc.
When put into Windows 7 it showed up as around 2.2gb first.

The fix to this was to make sure your motherboard can support it.
If your motherboard is relatively new, there is probably a Bios update that will fix it. (mine is a asus p8p67 m pro).

GPT Drive problems - booting etc
Next, if you plug it internally it shows up but if you want to boot from it then its possible that you need to convert it to GPT. This is done as usual through computer managment where you would usually format a drive to FAT or NTFS etc. Change the drive to MBR first and then the option for GPT appears.

Now I dont use RAID but I also found that there is an update from Intel that also resolves a known issue with 3TB drives: http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/218615en

External Caddy problems
So I was up and running but i decided to play a bit more and then found another problem, along with a fix that i thought i would share:
I took the drive back out of the case and this time inserted it into my external drive caddy (in my case a ICY BOX).

I then deleted the volume and Windows then reported the drive as around 748mb. The 3TB was no more!
After a little bit more investigation, I found that the ICY BOX was not actually able to see a drive of 3TB. The fix therefore is either get a caddy that does support it OR (as i did) put it back to internal, format it and then put it back in the caddy.

On doing this, Windows still sees the drive as 3TB and the caddy appears to work. I am still testing to see if the caddy continues to see the full 3TB but at the moment it does appear to work.

Hopefully this helps a few people. There may be a better article on here already that discusses it but you cannot have to many posts on a subject when precious game time is at stake :)

Let me know if it helps!

Cheers!

Twitter: @VandalArtistic
 
wedmonds said:
External Caddy problems
So I was up and running but i decided to play a bit more and then found another problem, along with a fix that i thought i would share:
I took the drive back out of the case and this time inserted it into my external drive caddy (in my case a ICY BOX).

I then deleted the volume and Windows then reported the drive as around 748mb. The 3TB was no more!
After a little bit more investigation, I found that the ICY BOX was not actually able to see a drive of 3TB. The fix therefore is either get a caddy that does support it OR (as i did) put it back to internal, format it and then put it back in the caddy.

On doing this, Windows still sees the drive as 3TB and the caddy appears to work. I am still testing to see if the caddy continues to see the full 3TB but at the moment it does appear to work.

Hopefully this helps a few people. There may be a better article on here already that discusses it but you cannot have to many posts on a subject when precious game time is at stake :)

Let me know if it helps!

Cheers!

Twitter: @VandalArtistic
Click to expand...

I've found that external drive caddies that have problems with 3tb drives tend to be JMicron controller based units, a firmware upgrade will correct the issue (and you can flash to a hacked firmware that allows the drive to sleep according to your computers power settings).

A little googling to confirm that the caddy uses the jmicron chipset and a visit to http://www.station-drivers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9864#9864 will fix you right up.

:)
 
Good tip, cheers.
I am seeing another problem now in that although the drives is now seen as 3TB in Windows. When I copy a large file over, it starts quickly and then goes slow to the point of affecting windows so that everything starts hanging.
Not sure of the fix yet.
Anyone got any experience with the same?
 
No did not resolve the issue :(
It actually created the drives but using Asus own utility exactly how Windows did it.
No additional space found.

Still the issue of really slow write speeds.
Anyone able to help?
 
Did you reformat the drive before running the ASUS disk unlocker?

Does this create one large volume or two partitions?

Try opening Computer Management console, go to disk management and see if the partition with the missing storage is there. You may need to format this partition yourself before you can use it. "new simple volume" or similar.
 
I think my issue is slightly different to what the disk unlocker fixes.
My issue is that the speed of transfer is slow to the point of hanging on my 3TB
I see the drive, the space and I am able to format no problem.
It just wont allow me to copy over large files.
 
Yep but just double checked to make sure.
Same result.
It is very odd.
Starts very fast but get about 1/3 across and then sticks with mbs dropping to nothing.
 
And a final update...
I decided to find a good hard drive testing software:
Plumped for : Seagate SeaTools for Windows
http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/seatools-win-master/

It produced errors, specifically : Short DST Failure.

Forums and helps files seem to mean that this is a knackered drive so I am going to send the thing back.

WHAT A TOTAL WASTE OF MY LIFE :)

Also spoke to Western Digital who said to run their Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows
You right click the drive and run quick test. 2 minutes later and : Error 07 appears to which they say I should send it back to them.

Trouble is they say that is at my cost and that it can take 10-15 days to turn it around.
What a joke these companies are.
 
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Glad you got the issue figured out, was going to suggest a drive test but wasn't near a PC that I trusted with my login details today.
 
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