I have a 3 TB drive. Windows 7 Ultimate won't format more than 2 TB in a partition. How do I get the entire drive in a single partition?

Anonymous
2011-04-06T02:03:31+00:00

The drive is installed as an internal hard drive in my system. It is not the system drive and will only hold data.

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Anonymous
2012-03-13T18:25:58+00:00

Let me clear this up:

To use any drive over 2.19 TB you will need:

  • A computer using Windows Vista or later (Windows XP isn't compatible with GPT formatted disks, so it can't see them)
  • A sata controller that is compatible (to find out if it is compatible, find out what motherboard or add-on board SATA controller you have and google it-e.g.  Intel ICH8 3TB )
  • A drive that is larger than 2.19 TB

So, if you know that you meet all three of the above requirements, follow proper installation procedures with installing a new drive and just hook it up.  Depending on where you bought the drive and if it is OEM or Retail it may or may not come pre-formatted with an NTFS partition of 2TB (this is for convenience to keep people from getting upset when they hook the drive up and it doesn't appear in My Computer).

Now, go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management.  Choose Disk Management on the left and you should see in the lower portion of the screen a list of your installed drives.  The larger drive should appear in the list with a capacity displaying on the left.  Note, a 3TB drive will only have a storage capacity of LOWER than 3TB (read: when you add formatting and a file system, both of those require space on the drive, so you will not have a full 3TB of space to use-this is the nature of hard drives-you will never have the full stated capacity-ever since it is required to make the drive useable).

Now, assuming you're using it as a data storage drive, ensure that nothing is still stored on it and right click on the partition on the right, right click the partition (if there is one on the drive already) and click "Delete Volume".

Next, right click on the name on the left "Disk #" and choose "Convert to GPT Disk".  Now this should allow you to right click on the unformatted  space on the right and to create a new partition which can hold the full available capacity of your drive.

This should work with all versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 (with the only exception being a starter edition *may not*).

With the variety of systems now sold using UEFI instead of BIOS, you can today on those systems install Windows directly onto a drive greater than 2.19TB in size.  Just ensure that your computer actually is using it before attempting to run Windows on a drive that large.  It's also probably not a great idea just due to the fact that if Windows fails you will likely lose all the data on that partition.

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Anonymous
2011-04-06T04:12:33+00:00

I guess you missed the part:

Even if you have a supported OS (Windows Vista, Windows 7, and most flavors of Linux) that recognizes GPT, you won't be able to boot to a drive of that size unless you also have a motherboard running UEFI—something that, as of this writing in late 2010, very few do. All current Intel boards support UEFI, but almost no other major manufacturer has yet followed suit. So, under most circumstances, if you don't have a UEFI motherboard (and you probably don't), you'll have to use your extra-large hard drive for storage only. (There are worse things.)

Finally, your system's SATA controller must also be designed to recognize 4KB blocks. This isn't necessarily a big deal: As we discovered when we reviewed Western Digital's new 3TB Caviar Green hard drive, the company is including with all its above-2.19TB drives a PCI Express x1 Host Bus Adapter that lets Windows use a known driver to communicate with the drive.

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-01-04T23:46:53+00:00

    If the Utilities that come with  Paragon GPT Loader are to confusing. 

    Create a Windows 7 Bootable USB Stick and boot of that partition the 3Tb Drive with the Disk Managment in Computer Managment in Adminastrative Tools in Control Panel.   To find Adminstrative Tools in Control Panel set from Category View to Icon View. 

    Oh yes I alurded to it above.  But make sure the BIOS and Firmware on all controllers and cards is the latest verson.  Updating the these may help get you the support 4k sectors you need.

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-04T22:55:09+00:00

    use diskpart from the cmd to delete all partitions.

    Create a GPT drive

    Create a NTFS partition

    or use HD Check to wipe the drive the create the GTP drive and NTFS partition.

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  3. Anonymous
    2013-01-04T22:45:00+00:00

    How to get Great than 2Tb Drives to Work on Windows XP.

    This is what you need.

    The motherboard can be standard old BIOS as long as it supports 4k sectors.  My motherboard from 2002 does as I specified when buying it.

    What sucks is I did not specify in my second backup computer as I did not think it was necessary.  But my 2006 motherboard in another computer does not support 4k sectors.  However a BIOS update fixed the problem.

    As a foot note even of the SATA Controller Card supports 4k sectors.  Some motherboards will not see the 3Tb drives correctly. Not all older motherboard will accept the 3Tb drives.  So if either the motherboard does not support 4K sectors them then the controller will not support 4k sector in that motherboard.

    Then you need to get a copy of a GPT driver for Windows XP.  Paragon GPT Loader is one there is an open source version out there but this come with utilities to make the setup easy.

    Install the 3Tb drive in a second, third or fourth motherboard SATA port.  I have 6 on the old motherboard.  If you have only one you are out of luck.  As the Paragon GPT Loader does not support controller cards.  The open source version does but it would take too long to write there.

    Now you the utilities it comes with Paragon GPT Loader to create and Format the GPT Partition.  You are done.

    The limitations you must have Windows XP Boot of a non GPT drive.  That means a drive set up with MBR.  Also you are limited to the number of SATA ports on the motherboard.

    Now I will write a technical article if people want on how to:

    ·         Install and boot Windows XP on standard BIOS with a 3Tb drive using Hybrid Partition

    ·         GPT Drivers to work on SATA Controller Card.

    Just it fiddly long and complicated and never written how to articles before.

    As a foot note recommend getting a copy of HD Check and run a surface scan on the drives once a month.  As modern especially high capacity drives drives often fail.  People often blame this resulting corrupt data on viruses.  But if you run a surface scan over the drive you get bad sectors. 

    Have found also drives will have bad sectors when doing a surface scan. The SMART technology that is meant to detect and alert Windows to the errors never detects the errors; detect and does not report to Windows or Windows does ton listened.  HD Check will show you the SMART error Windows can’t see and will find the Hard Drive Surface errors SMART can’t see.

    If you get drive with surface errors get it replace under warranty or through it out.  Hard Drive repair software does not work.  To get a warrantee performed you need to take a screen snap shot if the SMART or Surface San Report and send it to the manufacture after talking to them.  Some manufactures support staff will insist that such problems don’t occur or other claims to get out of warrantee.

    Use HD Check to wipe the drive before return to the manufacture for replacement.  Always insist the replacement is sent out first with a return fright sticker as the cost of sending the hard drive back can be as expensive as the hard drive itself.

    When you get the replacement check it once installing and then after a week as some manufactures send out refurbished drives.  Which are drives someone else has found bad sectors on and returned.  The manufacture has then marked the bad sectors not to appear or be used. So it appears good.  However once a drive starts getting bad sectors it is usually going to keep getting more bad sector. 

    So refurbished drives are bad.

    However to copy damage files of a drive use Bad Copy.  This will copy what it can of the file and skip over the damaged parts after a few tries.

    If a file becomes damaged and you try to copy it you will get a CRC error.  This means the part file is sitting over the equivalent scratch on your DVD. Again there is no way to repair the damage.  But you can use Bad Copy to recover the data.

    About my setup

    Now I am no expert on new technology.  However I am very good at tinkering system to get more out of them.

    I have a mother board on an old computer I use as a central backup for all the computers in the house.  I have written scripts to mirror all filled changes to the data and system partitions to the old computer and it is schedule to happen after mid night. 

    This way all the data from all the notebooks and desktop in the house backup after midnight of they are on and plugged in to the network.

    This data is mirror to a second computer over a second network card.  The second computer mirrors using a VPN to computers in three other states and two in other countries where I have friends or relatives. 

    Since the mirror only copy's new and changed files the data is never a great deal.  If I lose my data in the home computers and two backup computers. I have a copy in two other states and if they are lost due to disaster also.  There are bigger problems to worry about in the world.  But can restore the data from two other countries if required.

    My backup machine has 6 on motherboard 3Tb Drives.  4 SATA Controls each with 4 SATA Ports.

    Also to test on of the Ports on one of the 4 for SATA Controllers have install a SATA Port Multipler turn the single port into 5.

    So the computer has 24 x 3Tb drives on a 2002 PCI motherboard running Windows XP Standard.

    ·         1 x 3Tb Boot and Data Drive on Motherboard

    ·         5 x 3Tb = 15Tb Data Drives on Motherboard

    ·         11 x 3Tb = 33Tb Data Drives on SATA Controllers

    ·         5 x 3Tb / 3 * 2 = 10TGb on the SATA Multiplier with Hardware RAID 5

    ·         Total 63Tb

    If all the SATA Port on the PCI Cards and on the mother board are connected to SATA Port Multipliers the potential storage would increase to:

    ·         1 x 3Tb = 3Tb Motherboard

    ·         21 x 5 x 3Tb / 3 * 2 = 10TGb on the SATA Multipliers with Hardware RAID 5

    ·         Total 210Tb Potential 

    So as long as my motherboard does not die. I will not need to upgrade ant time soon.

    What am I doing with this storage historical option data minute by minute on 1000+ option-able instruments.

    The reason is the data is stored in Dbase II+ format and the custom code is in Clipper 87 and runs lightning fast.  Tried upgrading to SQL server and converting the code to SQL as I do lots of set base SQL optimising in my day job.  But found MS SQL and C# dead slow and takes up 10 to 20 times the space for the same data as Clipper, C and Dbase III+.

    However I have move my analysis computers to Windows 7 to get the benefits of more memory available so I can run multiple DOS session on each running separate Option analysis algorithms in custom Clipper. 

    Also the extra 64Gb of memory allows me to load the database into a RAM Drive in memory an instrument at a time perform analysis unbelievability fast.

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