Cannot Fully Format Seagate 1.5TB ST31500341AS

Mystic5hadow

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So I'm having an issue with my new 1.5 Terabyte Seagate drive, the most I can format out of it is 1020Gigs, leaving a vast chunk unused.

I don't know what the issue is, I've updated my BIOS and Mobo Drivers and checked everything I can think of with no luck.
I don't know what it could be, I'm sure it's something simple but at the moment I just can't think of what it is.

My comp specs are:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
eVga 780i Mobo
4 Gigs PC-6400 Mushkin DDR2
Dual eVga GeForce 260's in SLI
1 x 80 Gig SATA Maxtor
1 x 1TB SATA Hitachi
1 x 1.5TB SATA Seagate (the problem drive)

Running Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2

Lemme know if I missed anything.

Anyways, hope one of you guys can help, as I am at a complete loss.
 

Mystic5hadow

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Yeah, I'm trying to partition it but it won't let me partition any more than 1020GB's, afterwards, the leftover 300GB's sits there unallocated =(
 
I'd say you have a BIOS problem. It cannot recognize the size of the drive, it is too large. Used to be a common problem several years ago as drives started growing over 300 -400 megabytes. Most BIOS's of the time would not recognize the suddenly larger drives that were becoming available.
I would say you need a BIOS update. There used to use a program called a "Dynamic Drive Overlay" to work around this problem, but I think today you just probably update your BIOS. Check the Nvidia website as well for fixes or work arounds.
 

Paperdoc

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jitpublisher suggests a BIOS update is needed, and refers to older solutions like DDO's. He / she is right in one sense - you do not want to play with DDO's these days - it should be done with the right BIOS.

On the other hand, a BIOS update for large drives usually refers to the change from 28-bit to 48-bit LBA support. That is what allows you to go above the 137 GB size up to petabytes, whatever monster that is. This began to be incuded around year 2000. More importantly, it is ALWAYS part of any SATA controller system, because SATA was released with that support from its beginnings. And of course, XP SP2 has 48-bit LBA support in it. So I doubt it is a BIOS problem.

So, what IS the trouble? I don't know. I thought XP SP2 has some limit on the max size of one volume (partition) even though it can handle huge drives, but my fuzzy memory says that is around 2 TB, not 1. Maybe I'm wrong there.
 

Mystic5hadow

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I've tried everything I can think of, the drive shows the full size in the Disk Manager, BIOS, etc, etc.

I even replaced it with a new one from the store I got it from and had the same issue.

I updated drivers, BIOS, everything I could think of with no luck.

However, I read that Vista is having a similar issue with the drive, I'm using XP though so I don't see why I would be having the issue, but clearly something is up.

Either way, I stopped short of booting into a *nix live CD and checking the drive with that mainly because I just moved and don't have access to a blank CD/DVD right now. Regardless, it's just causing me a headache and everyone I talks to can't come up with a reason as to why this is going on.

So I'm returning the drive and picking up a second 1 Terabyte drive.

Thanks for trying to help guys =3
 

Ancient_1

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The only problem I had was for some reason I couldn't format from my XP install but from windows I had no problem formatting with seatools. They are fine in either Vista or XP sp3. For what I use them for they are very fast (mostly recodring and editing HD TV shows).

Drives.PNG
 

arpharazon

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Win XPx64 here. Just added the Seagate 1.5TB to my 2 - 500GB Samsungs, I am starting to approach full on #2 with a lot of ripped TV shows from my DVDs.
I also had XP showing .99TB after a long format.
Under Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management I right-clicked the drive in question (ST31500343AS) and deleted the original partition I set up with my XP disk, then set it up again and quick formatted and now it shows 1.36TB, which is closer to acceptable than .99TB.
Simple as that, I guess.
 

arpharazon

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Thanks. I wasn't 100% sure, I know it's never exactly what the drive size is supposed to be. I'm just glad it was such an easy fix (for a change).
 

aphilic

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Hi,

I know its an old issue but if there are other users who faced the exact same problem, maybe this would help them. I had the same trouble with the same HDD. I am using a Gigabyte motherboard with nVidia chipset. I installed the latest driver of nVidia downloaded from nvidia.com. Then i could format the HDD.

PS: The ad at ebay was deleted so i could not see the solution in that page. If it was suggesting the same solution, sorry in advance.

aphilic




 

bluethon

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Hy all
i also have sadly exactly the same problem like aphilic.

What was written on the ebay-site?

I also can't format over 1024 or ä similar GB size.

I tried everything. Formating on Vista, XP, format with an extern S-ATA to USB. No way to format the whole disk!

Who can help us? P-L-E-A-S-E!!!
 

molotovbadass

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People having issues with this drive should download SeaTools for DOS, click I Accept, fill out the form, download the file, create either a bootable floppy or CD/DVD, restart the computer and boot from that floppy or disc. You may need to use a PS2 keyboard or mouse to navigate SeaTools. Press F10 to bypass the disclaimer. You'll have to select an option from one of the drop-down menus indicating Set To Max Native. You may get an error saying "check to be sure that the drive has been power cycled", but this can be ignored. Restart the computer and boot up as normal. Check under Disk Management and you should now see that the drive is at its capacity (approximately 1.36TB).
 

aphilic

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I cannot argue with molotovbada's suggestion since I have never tried that program before. In my post I tried to explain my solution. Did you try updating the chipset driver of your motherboard? My suggestion is to try to find out the brand of CHIPSET (not motherboard) and go directly to the homepage of the chipset and download the appropriate and latest driver, then install it. In my case, my motherboard's brand was Gigabyte and the chipset of the motherboard was NVidia. The latest drives of the motherboard including the chipset in Gigabyte's website did not work. I downloaded the latest chipset driver from NVidia's webpage, and made it work properly.

I suggest you to do the same. Hope it works.

aphilic



 

nthomas4

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Just purchased a Seagate 1.5TB - ST31500341AS with firmware CC1H

I also cannot format this drive under Vista 64 bit to its full 1.5TB capacity.

I also cannot partition the drive to anything over around 800 Gigs and the remaining free space cannot be sub-partitioned.

When you do format to around 800 Gigs the drive seems ok.

I am using the drive in an Asus P5N32-E SLI motherboard with an nvidia based chipset.

Well I havent had much luck updating my nvidia SATA drivers for Vista 64-bit. Either i cant find the right driver or im reading lots of feedback which has caused more hassle than its worth so I decided against updating.

I did read an article which says to mount the drive in an external USB enclosure or ICY box mount and this appears to work.
 

nthomas4

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What link on nvidia's homepage did you goto to get hold of the latest SATA chipset driver?

cheers!!



 

asusdude24

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There have been many problems with the 1.5 TB seagate drives and personally I have found that the issue is the drives themselves... did you try exchanging for another 1.5 TB? I have 8 of them on an Areca RAID card in a RAID 5 as a single 10.5 TB partition and have had to replace a total of 3 of the drives due to failure... but I read online in multiple forums that many experienced issues with this drive. I suggest choosing another model or exchange it. I finally have my RAID 5 working properly so hopefully no replacement anytime soon....
 

bluethon

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Hy
A week ago i had the problem to formate the whole 1.5 TB
But now i found a way to solve this problem after several contacts with seagate.
My computer cut it self the drive to 500 GB (this can be a famous problem with DELL computers).
So here is the solution i used (after Dell had to change my mainboard because of a hardware defect - but this shouldn't be important)

1. go on seagate.com an click "Donwload Center"
2. choose unter General Software "SeaTools - diagnostic software"
3. click "Download SeaTools for DOS now! "
4. download the image and burn on a CD
5. boot from the CD
6. choose your 1.5 TB drive
7. choose under "Advanced..." the option
8. set capacity to the MAX (so you get the whole space back)
9. then you should be able to formate your whole drive with a quickformat in windows and use it

Hope this works also for others!!
 

goose61282

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I have a similar yet slightly different problem, I think. My drive did format completely and you can see the full size, however, you cannot use anything over 1TB. The computer will just freeze if you try to add more to the drive. I haven't tried the seagate tool, but it looks like that will erase all of the data on the drive. I will try this if that's what it takes, but I would like to be sure that this will solve the problem before I go through the trouble. Does this look like the same issue?
 

BasePointer

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yes similar but different way: ST31500341AS ver: CCH1, winXP 64 bit, ntfs single partition and long format.

here is my chkdsk results:
1465136000 KB total disk space.
47265804 KB in 9 files.
16 KB in 13 indexes.
391372928 KB in bad sectors. <---------------
110732 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
1026386520 KB available on disk.