4TB showing as 1.64TB?

baldzone · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:20

Just bought a new WD Red 4TB drive. Just put it in a USB enclosure and it's showing as 1.64TB.
Using Windows 8 (64 bit) and an Akasa enclosure. The support on Akasa website says;

Akasa External USB, and eSATA enclosures using HDD's over 2 TB's cannot be formatted on Windows 32-bit operating systems using the Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme. This means when you connect drives over 2 TB's, they may not be recognized at all, may be only partially recognized, or they may be recognized but not accessible. Other PC problems such as system lock up or computer failure to boot up may occur.

Any ideas how I can get the full use of the drive? Trying to use it to back up about 3GB of data!

Craig321 · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:23

Sounds like the drive is formatted as MBR. You'll need to change it to GPT to go over 2TB.

baldzone · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:28

I've formatted it as GPT and tried extending the volume. Still won't allow me to go over 1.64TB?

Also tried deleting volume and creating. Any ideas?

Minstadave · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:30

USB enclosure may be the limiting factor.

Craig321 · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:30

Odd. Can you see the rest of the space in disk management?

baldzone · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:35

No. I can see 1677.90GB unallocated when I delete the volume. To format I have the options of NTFS, exFAT or ReFS. None seem to give me full HDD capacity.

According to Akasa, it's not a limitiation of the enclosure.

wazza300 · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:43

latest motherboard bios?

might be something to do with uefi not sure tho

Craig321 · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:54

wazza300 said:
latest motherboard bios?

might be something to do with uefi not sure tho

UEFI does the opposite and allows a ton more HD space, doesn't it?

YOu could try install the Intel Rapid Storage technology drivers.

ginjaninja · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:55

for me, i have to connect 4tb drives to the motherboard 1st to recognise and format as gpt 4tb...then when i put them into my enclosures and caddies they are properly recognised.

MagicBoy · 16 Aug 2014 at 14:58

It's the USB enclosure limited to 32-bit LBA. You need a newer one.

baldzone · 16 Aug 2014 at 15:01

Thanks guys. Will give it a try tomorrow. Off out for the rest of the day now

Will let you know how I get on!

baldzone · 17 Aug 2014 at 10:05

Morning folks.

The Akasa website says it's not an issue with the enclosure!

I plugged the drive directly into the motherboard and formatted it as 4TB.

Here's the weird part. Plugging in with USB 2.0, it reads as 4 TB as a normal drive. Plugging in as eSATA it's not recognised and when I go to Computer manager it shows as an unformatted drive with a capacity of 1.64TB. Weird!

I can use it as USB 2.0 with 4 TB so that will do me thanks guys

Thank you for your help, especially ginganinja

Phil2008 · 17 Aug 2014 at 13:15

I hate usb enclosures for large hdds, as they are hit and miss. I prefer esata enclosures as they normally always work with any hdd.

crinkleshoes · 17 Aug 2014 at 13:30

Phil2008 said:
I prefer esata enclosures as they normally always work

fizzy · 17 Aug 2014 at 15:55

Is the esata running off the intel chipset though? I have seen a lot of boards that use an alternative chip (like a marvell etc) to control the esata.

Could be an issue with the drivers or bios for that, especially since everything appears fine with USB.

Only way to rule that out would be to try another machine with esata, or try a sata to esata cable to connect the enclosure to an internal connector for testing.

baldzone · 18 Aug 2014 at 13:34

The esata connection is an external port in my 3/4 year old dell laptop. Based on intel processor, no idea about sata cotroller. Bios is up to date for laptop.

It's working, albeit very slowly! Over 24 hours now and still backing up. Only getting 10Mb per sec as it's over an old network. Still, once it's done it'll be fairly quick (I hope). And no, I don't really know what I'm doing before anyone asks or comments!