WD Red Pro - Formatting for Windows 10

[ThankYouRob]

I'm setting up a home server in a Windows 10 box.

Initially I'd wanted to setup 2 - 3TB WD Red Pro drives in a Raid 1 config, but as it turns out my MOBO doesnt support RAID, so I thought I'd just setup the hard drives and replicate the data (music/movies/photos) between the 2, however, when I plug these hard drives in (internally), the BIOS recognizes them in their full size/info. Windows on the other hand does not.

Disk Management doesnt even show them. If I plug them in as an external hard drive (via USB) they show as roughly 100MB...in my research, it seems these are NAS intended storage, thus they are formatted for Linux. So my question, if ANYONE can please help me here...is it even possible for me to use them in Windows as just an additional drive and if so, how can I format them to do so?

This is an Intel Core i5 setup, MOBO with 4 SATA III 6GB/s ports, Windows 10 Pro.

ANY HELP IS GREATLY APPRECIATED HERE, THANK YOU!

 

[shivababbli]

just connect externally and then try formatting it with default ntfs partition

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the TH community, Rob!

I'm sorry that you are facing such issues with your WD Red Pro HDDs. 🙁 I'd advise you to try using different SATA cables with them and check if that will help your system to recognize them properly in Disk management. I'd also suggest you try resetting BIOS, hopefully, getting the BIOS settings back to factory defaults will resolve the issue. I'd also suggest you try to 'Rescan Disks' in Disk Management to check if that will make the drives pop up.

Are you using an enclosure when connecting them externally? It's possible that the enclosure is configured differently and that's why it's not seeing the WD Red Pros in their correct capacity. However, you should know that the HDDs come unformatted. You'd need to initialize and then partition & format them yourself, in order to be able to use them.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[ThankYouRob]

My initial instinct was right, it was the fact that these NAS drives are formatted for Linux, so just booting with a Windows 7 disk and formatting them worked and Windows does see them!