My 6 t Western Digital WD6003FZBX is seen as a 6 t by UEFI Bios but only 1.5 t by Windows 7.

[cibdetab]

Also, when the HD is plug on an external USB adaptor, Windows sees it as a 6 t and formats it accordingly. When the HD is reinserted in the computer, Windows reports it as a 6 t but in the Disc Manager, the stripe that shows the disc regions of the 6 t is shorter than my 4 t and seems to correspond approximately to 1.5 t. The true problem is that eventually, the disc disappears and returns to a 1.5 t uninitialized status. Do you have an idea?

 

[jojesa]

Format the WD disk with GPT format and you should be able to use all the space on the disk.
Use Disk Management to delete all partitions on the disk.
Right click the disk on the left side of the Disk Management Window and select Convert to GPT Disk
Create a new partition with the Wizard.

 

[cibdetab]

I don't know what is not clear in my question but English is not my first language. When the HD is clean (not formated and not even initialized) and directly connected to my motherboard with a SATA cable, Windows Disk Manager report it as a 1.5 T. How can I format it GPT to 6 T?

 

[jojesa]

I don't know what is not clear in my question but English is not my first language. When the HD is clean (not formated and not even initialized) and directly connected to my motherboard with a SATA cable, Windows Disk Manager report it as a 1.5 T. How can I format it GPT to 6 T?

I understand clearly your issue, you should follow the steps to be able to use you new disk.
Windows 7 does not support disks larger then 2TB unless you format the disk using GPT format.
-In Windows Disk Manager, right click on each partition and volume on the disk and click on Delete Volume until the whole disk is unallocated space.
-Right click on the disk # on the left and click on Convert to GPT Disk from the menu.
-When finished, you can see that full space on the disk.

 

[cibdetab]

I did what you say and delete volume. As soon as the volume was deleted, the drive appears as a 1492.91 GB unallocated. When I right click on the disk #, the only conversions that I see are: "Convert to dynamic disk..." and "Convert to MBR disk" because my drive is already a GPT disc.

 

[jojesa]

I did what you say and delete volume. As soon as the volume was deleted, the drive appears as a 1492.91 GB unallocated. When I right click on the disk #, the only conversions that I see are: "Convert to dynamic disk..." and "Convert to MBR disk" because my drive is already a GPT disc.

For you to be able to utilize the full capacity the system firmware must use UEFI, the Windows version must be 64-bit only, and the HDD must be GPT.
It looks like the process is not going thru, we could try using Diskpart from Command prompt.

Open Command prompt as admin
Type Diskpart, press Enter
Type List Disk , press Enter (you will see a list of disks on your PC)
Type Select Disk # (replace # with the number your 6TB drive) press Enter
Type Clean, press Enter
Type Convert GPT, press Enter
When done, type Exit, press Enter.
Close the Command Prompt window.

 

[cibdetab]

I did what you say with the same result. In my opinion, I can convert a GPT disk in GPT disk with fifty different programs, I will have the same result at the end.

 

[jojesa]

Which computer model or motherboard do you have?

 

[cibdetab]

Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe

 

[jojesa]

I see that the motherboard has 2 SATA controllers (Intel & Marvell). Have you try connecting the HDD to each one?
Connect the HDD to an Intel SATA port (gray or light blue).
Uninstalled Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) and reboot.
Allow Windows to install and configure and see if the full drive capacity is showing.
If it doesn't then try updating the drivers of the SATA controllers to Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST)

 

[misar]

There is a possible solution to your problem but it depends on your USB HDD adapter and how you use it.

Modern USB HDD enclosures usually have a special bridge chip. This allows HDDs larger than 2TB to be used with almost any OS, even Windows XP. The computer may have a legacy BIOS and sees the HDD as a very large MBR drive which it can read. This is because the bridge chip translates what is really happening on the drive. I have two 4TB Seagate USB external drives. These appear on any OS as MBR with a single 4TB NTFS partition.

If the HDD is removed from the enclosure/adapter and installed in a PC it will be no longer have the chip and must be GPT and used with a UEFI BIOS. For information unless it is used as a boot drive it will also work with 32bit Windows 7.

There is a problem moving a HDD between a USB adapter and an internal drive connection. If you formatted it via a bridge chip while in the adapter (even as a GPT disk) it probably will not work internally. The same applies going the other way. This *may* explain your problem.

Please explain exactly what you have done and in which location(s) you have been setting the disk type (MBR or GPT) and format.

Edit: Also what is the make/model of the USB adapter? If it is one of those that says it can be used with any OS and is backward compatible to USB1 it almost certainly has a bridge chip.

 

[cibdetab]

To misar: My problem is not really to install a drive formatted in a usb box in a computer sata slot. This was only a test to check if Disk Manager can see a 6 T when the drive is formatted like that. My problem is that the Disk Manager only see a 1492.91 GB drive when the drive is not even initialized.

To jojesa: It is nearly where I am. I found on Youtube a "FIX: New 3 TB DRIVE only shows 746GB" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6yNEbXRtQs) which is exactly the half of my problem. In this video, the solution is to update RST. However, some guys here and there warn against this update and suggest to ask the mb manufacturer if RST is compatible or if they have a special version for their motherboard. I will check this side and install a new version but backup my C: before.

Funny things; I discover that not only UEFI see the drive as 6 T but also Sandra and Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox.

I'll return after some tests

 

[jojesa]

To jojesa: It is nearly where I am. I found on Youtube a "FIX: New 3 TB DRIVE only shows 746GB" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6yNEbXRtQs) which is exactly the half of my problem. In this video, the solution is to update RST. However, some guys here and there warn against this update and suggest to ask the mb manufacturer if RST is compatible or if they have a special version for their motherboard. I will check this side and install a new version but backup my C: before.

Funny things; I discover that not only UEFI see the drive as 6 T but also Sandra and Intel Solid-State Drive Toolbox.

I'll return after some tests

That's why I suggested to first just uninstalled Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) and reboot and allow Windows to install it back or get the drivers from Intel website.
It could be a bug in the drivers not reading the HDD info correctly.
If that does not work then you might need to get the Intel RST.

 

[misar]

To misar: My problem is not really to install a drive formatted in a usb box in a computer sata slot. This was only a test to check if Disk Manager can see a 6 T when the drive is formatted like that. My problem is that the Disk Manager only see a 1492.91 GB drive when the drive is not even initialized.

I was answering your first question:
Also, when the HD is plug on an external USB adaptor, Windows sees it as a 6 t and formats it accordingly. When the HD is reinserted in the computer, Windows reports it as a 6 t but in the Disc Manager, the stripe that shows the disc regions of the 6 t is shorter than my 4 t and seems to correspond approximately to 1.5 t. The true problem is that eventually, the disc disappears and returns to a 1.5 t uninitialized status. Do you have an idea?

 

[cibdetab]

To misar: My problem is not really to install a drive formatted in a usb box in a computer sata slot. This was only a test to check if Disk Manager can see a 6 T when the drive is formatted like that. My problem is that the Disk Manager only see a 1492.91 GB drive when the drive is not even initialized.

I was answering your first question:
Also, when the HD is plug on an external USB adaptor, Windows sees it as a 6 t and formats it accordingly. When the HD is reinserted in the computer, Windows reports it as a 6 t but in the Disc Manager, the stripe that shows the disc regions of the 6 t is shorter than my 4 t and seems to correspond approximately to 1.5 t. The true problem is that eventually, the disc disappears and returns to a 1.5 t uninitialized status. Do you have an idea?

I understand but "Also" mean; my true problem is the header: "My 6 t Western Digital WD6003FZBX is seen as a 6 t by UEFI Bios but only 1.5 t by Windows 7." Thanks for your help.

 

[cibdetab]

Hurrah! I updated RST and now, Disk Manager see my drive as a 6 T. I don't know if other programs already work but for now, my 6 T problem is solve. Thank you to both of you.

 

[jojesa]

That's great!
Lets hope there will be no issues.

 

[fzabkar]

@cibdetab, the root cause of your problem is that your Windows SATA or RAID driver has a 32-bit LBA limitation. This results in a maximum capacity of 2TiB. In order to report a capacity of 6TB, the driver would need to support at least 34 bits.

When the two uppermost bits are ignored by the driver, the reported capacity is limited to the lower 32 bits.

• (6 TB) - (4 TiB) = 1.46 tebibytes

http://www.google.com/search?&q=6TB+-+4TiB+in+TiB

Looking at it another way, the number of guaranteed sectors for a Seagate 6TB drive is ...

• 11,721,045,168 = 0x2BAA0F4B0

If we ignore bits 32 and 33, then the number of sectors in hex becomes ...

• 0xBAA0F4B0

The reported capacity then becomes ...

• 0xBAA0F4B0 sectors * 512 bytes per sector = 1.46 tebibytes

http://www.google.com/search?q=0xBAA0F4B0+*+512+bytes+in+TiB