Question WD 8tb showing as 1.5tb

[loondawg]

I took apart a WD 8TB Elements USB drive to use the disk. When I first plugged it in, it showed as and 8TB RAW format drive in windows 10 disk management. So I deleted the existing partition and created a new simple volume using the hardware wizard. I've done this so many times that I honestly did not pay attention to the settings. But when it was finished, it had created 1308.02GB partition and assigned a drive letter, but all the rest of the disk's space had disappeared.

The drive now shows as a basic 1308.02GB drive. It does not show any unallocated space. The rest of the drive seems to have just disappeared. I checked using FDISK and it shows the same thing.

Should I assume this is just a bad drive? Or could I have done something to have caused this? Is there a way to test to be sure or to try to recover the missing space? Is there some trick in the firmware from WD to prevent reusing the drives?

This drive was old stock but had barely been used. To the best of my knowledge it was working and had never been damaged.

 

[hedwar2011]

Check the drive with CrystalDiskInfo and see what it reports. Worse case scenario, reformat the drive via Disk Management and see if it recovers.

 

[loondawg]

Thanks. I will try that. Right now I'm still trying some other troubleshooting and it's just getting weirder and weirder. The drive seems to work when attached via any USB but will not power up via the PC power supply.

After trying a bunch of things that changed nothing, I ran FDISK on the reported 1.5TB drive and cleared it. Then I reattached it to the original USB card from the WD Elements case. Disk Management then saw it as an 8TB drive again and allowed for initialization and a full format with no problems.

I thought problem solved so I reinstalled it into the PC case. It would not show up. Put it back on the USB card, worked fine. Repeated those steps about a dozen times. Every single time it worked perfectly via the USB card but it refused to work from the PC power supply with SATA. I retried multiple SATA cables and SATA power connectors , including detaching plugs from working drives.

And to confirm it was not something special about the Elements card, I tested with another USB drive caddy I have and it works fine via that. So it just seems like it does not want to work when attached via the PC power supply. Makes no sense to me at all. There is no spin up sound and there is no gyro feel if you pick it up when attached as an internal drive if it's formatted at the full 8TB. It almost seems like it has been restricted to 1.5TB when working as an internal 8TB drive.

 

[fzabkar]

The drive seems to work when attached via any USB but will not power up via the PC power supply.

Power Disable Feature (SATA 3.2+ / 3.3):
https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=2094

Your current enclosure appears to have a 32-bit LBA limitation. A capacity of 8TB requires 34 bits to report the full LBA count.

8TB - (3 x 2TiB) = 1 306.6 GiB​

 

[loondawg]

Power Disable Feature (SATA 3.2+ / 3.3):
https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=2094

Your current enclosure appears to have a 32-bit LBA limitation. A capacity of 8TB requires 34 bits to report the full LBA count.

8TB - (3 x 2TiB) = 1 306.6 GiB​

Thank you. That is some great info.

I looked at the solution of isolating pin P3 from the +3.3V supply and wiring it to ground and that seems well beyond my abilities. So am I correct in understanding this means the PSU will need to be replaced with a more modern one? And also that explains why other 8TB drives without this feature would still power up using the existing PSU?

 

[SkyNetRising]

I looked at the solution of isolating pin P3 from the +3.3V supply and wiring it to ground and that seems well beyond my abilities.

Just get molex to sata adapter. Make sure it has 4 wires (not 5).

 

[SkyNetRising]

or SATA Y type cable. Again make sure it has 4 wires (not 5).
For 5 wire cable you'd have to cut one of wires (usually pink, grey or orange color).

 

[fzabkar]

Another solution is to place insulation tape over pin #3.

 

[loondawg]

Just get molex to sata adapter. Make sure it has 4 wires (not 5).

Thank you so much for both those replies. I'm sure I can dig some of those up somewhere.

 

[loondawg]

Another solution is to place insulation tape over pin #3.

I thought about that but it seemed like the thread you linked said it had to be grounded.

 

[fzabkar]

I thought about that but it seemed like the thread you linked said it had to be grounded.

I haven't looked closely, but I expect that P3 would be tied to ground via a pull-down resistor or similar. This means that simply leaving this pin unconnected would effectively ground it.

 

[dwd999]

Does the drive have an GPT partition table, not MBR?