Anker USB HDD docking station and WD Green 3 Tb HDD

[ScubaDiver]

I purchased the Anker USB 3.0 and eSATA To SATA External Hard Drive Docking Station for 2.5 / 3.5in HDD and SSD and connected it to my computer via eSATA cable.

I installed into the docking station a newly purchased (and not yet used) Western Digital Green desktop 3Tb HDD (SATA / 64 Mb cache) (WD30EZRX).

The computer recognizes the WD HDD in the docking station, for the computer generates a sound, and the icon for “Safely remove hardware and eject media” appears in the notification area of the system tray. But the 3 Tb drive does not appear in Windows Explorer.

I opened Computer Management, and under Storage/Disk Management, it showed the 3 Tb drive as Drive 1 but not initialized. I right-clicked on the drive and initialized with GPT. It only shows 746.39 Gb instead of close to 3 Tb. And the 3 Tb still does not show up in Explorer.

Another (older) drive (500 Gb) does show up, so the Anker device is not DOA. I emailed Anker but have not gotten a response other than they will check with QC to see if there is a problem.

I am using Windows 10 Pro on a Dell Optiplex 780 with most current Dell BIOS (A 15). The processor is Intel Core 2 Duo E 8400 CPU 3 GHz. 4 Gb of memory installed. 32-bit operating system.

Windows is up to date per Windows (but have not yet received the November update that is essentially service pack 1).

I had Windows seek to update the driver for the HDD and received a message that the driver was the best driver available.

I cannot use the docking station to make backups if the computer doesn’t recognize it (and as a 3 Tb drive). What do I need to do to solve this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[drtweak]

Eh I have this issue when I try to use 2TB+ drives in docks that don't support 2TB+. Had one client. Got them 2 3TB WD Reds for backup drives and had a USB dock on them, even with newer docks that support up to 6TB this happened when it was connected VIA USB. Connecting it VIA eSATA fixed the issue.

But unfortunatly I am sorry to tell you that the 780 doesn't support anything over 2TB. It isn't until the 390/790/990 that 2TB+ were finally supported.

If you can try it over USB and see if that works. If not then you can only do one of two things.

1) Buy a SATA card that supports 2TB+ which are most these days
2) Buy a 3TB External Drive for 2TB+ Support

 

[ScubaDiver]

I got the solution from Western Digital support, which was to try getting the drive set up in a different computer.

I installed the WD disk as an additional drive in my son's computer. I right-clicked on Start (the Windows logo on the bottom-left of the screen) and clicked on Disk Management. Since I had been able to initialize the WD disk with GPT on the Dell, the disk was already initialized. There was no no partition and data on the disk and therefore it appeared as Unallocated, with a black bar on top.

I right-clicked the Unallocated space and clicked New Simple Volume. The New Simple Volume Wizard opened, I clicked Next, and the maximum disk space was already selected by default. I left it the default and assigned a drive letter. I set the file system to NTFS and left the Allocation unit size at Default. I gave the disk a name in the The Volume Label field and checked the box labeled Perform a quick format and clicked Next. The wizard formatted the volume, and I clicked finish. The WD disk appeared in Windows Explorer of my son's computer with the assigned drive letter.

I then removed the WD disk from my son's computer and inserted it into the Anker docking station for my Dell. Oh, joy. It worked. The WD disk now shows up in Windows Explorer as a drive with 2.72 Tb of free space and and used space 267 Mb, which I assume is used for file management and other internal purposes of the disk.

 

[drtweak]

Yes I had to do the same exact thing. But I will warn you NOW! After so long It does the whole 746Gb thing again! So make sure any data you have is backed up! Because only way to fix it is to wipe it all and do what you did on the Dell all over again and lose everything. You are forwarned! lol Only way i was able to fix it is hoot it up though esata on a add in card that supported drivers over 2TB. Their RAID card in that server didn't support 2+TB drives.