[SOLVED] Larger Than 3TB Hard Drives Not SHowing in BIOS

[manolo2001]

Hi,

I'm setting up an oldish Dell Optiplex 7020 I had lying around, it has an i3-4150, 8Gb ram 240Gb SSD. I want to use it as a media server, but am unable to use hard drives larger than 3Tb. I have, on another machine, three 8Tb drives with the media inside, but the board simply will not recognize anything larger than 3Tb.

I updated the BIOS to the latest A17 version, I have tried various BIOS settings, but in the BIOS menu where hard drives are listed, nothing larger than 3Tb shows up. That is, 3 Tb and smaller do show up alingisde the boot SSD.

I tried a brand new 6Tb drive, and it won't show, I have a couple 4Tb as well, and they don't show. One 3Tb shows up, and all smaller ones do as well.

I would defintiely like to use this board for my media server, but as it is I can't. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

Manolo

 

[Bob.B]

Hi,

I'm setting up an oldish Dell Optiplex 7020 I had lying around, it has an i3-4150, 8Gb ram 240Gb SSD. I want to use it as a media server, but am unable to use hard drives larger than 3Tb. I have, on another machine, three 8Tb drives with the media inside, but the board simply will not recognize anything larger than 3Tb.

I updated the BIOS to the latest A17 version, I have tried various BIOS settings, but in the BIOS menu where hard drives are listed, nothing larger than 3Tb shows up. That is, 3 Tb and smaller do show up alingisde the boot SSD.

I tried a brand new 6Tb drive, and it won't show, I have a couple 4Tb as well, and they don't show. One 3Tb shows up, and all smaller ones do as well.

I would defintiely like to use this board for my media server, but as it is I can't. Any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

Manolo

I see bios version a18......also get the latest chipset driver.
Are these large disk gpt and ntfs?

 

[punkncat]

Do you mean the new/large ones don't show in File Explorer (My PC) or don't show in Disk Management?

Edit-
I looked around a bit and it seems there is conflicting information here and there. One user mentioned his (7020) only seeing 2TB, and in the same Reddit someone else saying they were using an 8...Officially I cannot find anything on Dell aside from them mentioning it was optioned new with as large as 1TB HDD.

 

[manolo2001]

Do you mean the new/large ones don't show in File Explorer (My PC) or don't show in Disk Management?

Edit-
I looked around a bit and it seems there is conflicting information here and there. One user mentioned his (7020) only seeing 2TB, and in the same Reddit someone else saying they were using an 8...Officially I cannot find anything on Dell aside from them mentioning it was optioned new with as large as 1TB HDD.

Hi, they are not seen anywhere, not in the BIOS part that shows all connected hard drives (non USB), SATA drives, they show up on the BIOS system summary screen. If they show up in the BIOS screen they show up in any OS I boot. I am unable to make larger than 3 TB hard drives show up in the BIOS, thus they don't show up in the OSs.

I saw that post in reddit as well and I somehow think they were trying to boot from a large drive which can be quirky (EFI/legacy) from what I understand. But it's not my case. I have a small SSD which boots fine into windows, and have tried Linux etc. But it's always the same story, should be able to see them but can't.

I have these media drives on a hackintosh and they work fine, also used them to transfer some files on Linux (exFat formatted drives) and it worked fine, windows sees them on another computer, I think it's a board or BIOS problem, but can't figure out what, granted it is an oldish board.

Maybe it's the chipset that limits the drive size.

BIOS is the latest version, and from what I have read on the internet this board should work with larger than 3TB drives.

I tried a brand new 6TB drive as well and nothing. Like I said I am first looking for the drives to be recognized by the BIOS, if they are not there they simply won't show up on any OS I boot.

Thanks !!!

Manolo

 

[fzabkar]

Do these drives spin up?

Newer models are affected by an update to the SATA specification which redefines SATA power pin #3 as Power Disable. If your PSU puts +3.3V on this pin, then these new drives won't spin up.

 

[manolo2001]

Do these drives spin up?

Newer models are affected by an update to the SATA specification which redefines SATA power pin #3 as Power Disable. If your PSU puts +3.3V on this pin, then these new drives won't spin up.

They don't spin. That is correct I will try masking the second or third pin, will check, treats them as shucked drives or something like that, I guess.

Will report back, thank you.

Manolo

 

[manolo2001]

You were absolutely correct !!!!!!

That was the issue it was putting out +3.3V on the third pin, drives are all 100% recognized and usable now, a thin strip of electric tape did the job.

Thank you very much.

Manolo

 

[manolo2001]

Hi, I think I jumped the gun on this, all WD drives work fine with the third pin masked. But ....
all my Toshiba 8Tb drives still don't spin. Any suggestions ?? I have tried, of course masked third pin, and not masked. They are 8Tb x300 Toshiba hdds.

Any suggestions are very welcome.

Thanks

Manolo