Problem using 3TB HDD as boot disk

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ws1173

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Jun 9, 2012
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Hello everyone,

So, last summer I built myself a nice new machine, including a Western Digital 2TB hard drive (I'll list the rest of my specs later). Recently, I wanted to upgrade to a 3TB drive, so I sold my 2TB to a friend, and went out and bought a 3TB drive. The cheapest one I was able to find was actually the Seagate GoFlex 3TB external drive, so I bought that, opened up the case, and put it in my desktop. I then encountered a bunch of unexpected problems with using a drive greater than 2.2TB. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my motherboard has UEFI BIOS, so larger drives are supported, but I'm still having problems. Originally, I was having problems installing Windows on it, but eventually I learned that I needed to use GPT rather than MBR, so I did. I was finally able to get Windows on the drive, but when I boot up and go to either my computer or disk manager, the primary partition only shows up as 2.00TB, and the remaining 700 or so TB show up as unallocated space that I can't do anything with. It almost seems as if, even though I cleared the drive and created a new GPT partition table on it immediately before installing Windows on it, Windows changed it from GPT to MBR during the installation process. Please let me know if anyone know how to use a 3TB hard drive as a boot drive, and use all 3TB of it.

My specs are as follows:
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 Pro (Rev 3.0) LGA 1155
Processor: Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7-2600K
GPU: 2x EVGA 01G-P3-1560-KR GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) in SLI
RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB)
HDD: Seagate STAC3000102 3TB
ODD: LG N82E16827136181 Blu-Ray Burner
 
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No, it won't let me create a partition with the unallocated space. It does offer expanding the primary partition as an option, butt when I try to do that it comes up with an error message that says that the partition size can't exceed 2TB.
 
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ok. since i haven't install windows on a 3TB drive i do not know the exact steps. i am trying to figure out if during the process you did not allocate all 3TBs to the GPT.
 
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Well, as it is now, when I made the GPT (which I tried using Windows and Linux), I left it unallocated. The first time I tried this, I created the GPT and then formatted it as NTFS, but then when I tried to install Windows, I got an error saying that Windows cannot be installed on the drive because it was GPT.
 
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Ok to install this correctly you need to boot from a Win 7 64bit disk on the UEFI part of the Win7 disk seems you booted from the MBR part of it. Booting to the UEFI part will allow you to use GPT which should give you to access all 3TB of that disk when used as a boot disk. When you go to install windows go into the BIOS then select the UEFI section of the windows disk from the boot menu.
 
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I am booting from a Windows 7 Ultimate x64 disk. What do you mean by booting from the UEFI part of the disk?
 
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If you look in the BIOS(UEFI) when you have that disk in your drive you will notice there are two boot options for that disk listed one says the device name the other says UEFI (device name). I have a ASUS M5A99X (with ASUS UEFI) and that is how it is listed based on your motherboard our BIOS's should be pretty similar. You will want to select the UEFI device from that list the BIOS defaults to booting to the MBR section which doesn't work for GPT partitions. Although if it is like mine you can change that somewhere in the advanced settings. (I don't remember where though).
 
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I remember reading this somewhere else earlier today when I was trying to figure this all out, but I do not see two options in the UEFI BIOS. Is it possible that it's an issue with the ODD I'm using?
 
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it looks like caqde has ACTUALLY done this and i haven't.

i shall lurk . .
 
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Might be an issue with the disk or BIOS.. I doubt it is an issue with the drive as the drive is literally dumb when it comes to MBR/GPT etc it doesn't know what it is reading it is just told to read or write it just wants to know what, where, and how. Try updating to the latest firmware for your MB and see if that helps. Otherwise you might need to burn a Win 7 x64 disk that has its UEFI boot sector in tact. I've had a Win 8 disk that didn't have it so I wouldn't be surprised if some win 7 disks don't.

EDIT: thought though safest bet would be burning a newer Win 7 x64 disk as there should be two listed for those disks especially if it is an x64 disk.
 
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So, I updated my UEFI BIOS to the latest version, and it still isn't working. When I was updating the BIOS, the flash drive that I was using came up in the BIOS as "UEFI: USB 2.0...", but the DVD drive I'm using to install Windows still doesn't come up with a UEFI option. Does that mean there's something wrong with the install DVD I'm using?
 
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So, what I had assumed earlier might have been the problem definitely is. I created the GUID Partition Table using Ubuntu, and then installed Windows, but when I boot from the drive and go into disk management, it says there that the partition style is MBR.
 
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boot into the ubuntu live CD, delete all the partitions on the disk, reboot into the windows 7 installation DVD and let it do the work.
 
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