Windows 7 can't handle a 3Tb hard drive

[Jinxie617]

I had 2 - 1Tb hard drives (1 was mirroring the other) and the main one failed.

Husband bought me a 3Tb replacement (no longer being mirrored of course) and when he installed it, Windows 7 couldn't handle it, so he had to do his magic and fake the computer into thinking it's only 2Tb. for Windows 7 to then work properly with it.

I was only using about 1/2 of my 1Tb in the first place, but admit that I feel a bit greedy now that I have the 3Tb and want to have the full card available to use (if I want).

So what's up with that? Why can't Windows 7 run my hard drive and play nice with it at 3Tb?

 

[4745454b]

Who says its windows that has the problem? From the complete lack of system specs we can only guess as to whats wrong.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/235088/everything_you_need_to_know_about_3TB_hard_drives.html

In that formula, 2 indicates binary, 32 is the number of bits allowed in a legacy disk address, and 512 is the number of bytes in a legacy hard-drive data block. If the BIOS, drivers, I/O card, or operating system in your PC still plays by rules that involve this formula, you'll have issues installing and using a 3TB drive.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Windows 7 does support larger than 2TB drives. However, not in all cases. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408

 

[Ironsounds]

Hello... you can partition a drive to use all of it... it looks like you have two drives in windows instead of one.

 

[Jinxie617]

Husband: "after learning that windows 7 and BIOS would not work with >2TB drives, i attempted to use EFI instead, but was unsuccessful. i will need to configure the additional 800GB of space as a D: drive. Motherboard is X58 Extreme3."

 

[Jinxie617]

Me: I'm not a techy, if I knew what the issue was and my husband had explained it, rather than giving me a brief, brush-off answer as to why it didn't work in the first place, I wouldn't have posted the question. That being said, I appreciate the majority of responses that included links and information that explained the problem.

He will most likely end up partitioning the unused 800GB as a quick fix. I would prefer to not do that, but just be able to use all 3TB as 1 single drive (I had a seta flash drive as my c: drive originally and he had a 1TB drive as my e: drive and another 1TB mirroring the e: drive. I quickly began having issues with the c: drive as there are many programs that only install to the c: drive (and I really didn't want to mess around with re-mapping), we discovered the mirroring drive was broken when he went to replace the c: flash drive with the mirroring drive - this got us to purchasing and installing a 3TB drive to replace the c: flash drive completely so I would never have to deal with that issue again.)

So you can see how I would feel a big gun shy about having multiple drives and partitioning at this point. I'd just like to have 1 usable 3TB drive. He is telling me it will take a lot of research and time to figure out how to configure my machine to make it work.

So my question is, based on all of this and now that you know what my system is, the problem, do any of you know how to make it work and can provide a link or the directions?

Thank you kindly for respectful responses.

 

[AxlMyk]

Slap your husband, and take yourself out to dinner.

 

[lp231]

Here is the thing with 3TB HDDs.
First your systems' motherboard must have UEFI (if it's a boot drive)
2nd the Windows your running has to be 64bit like Windows 7 64bit or Windows 8/8.1 64bit.
To get the full 3TB in 1 single partition, partition the 3TB as GPT not MBR.
Go to in disk management and then create the 3TB in GPT

For motherboard that doesn't have UEFI then visit your motheboard's website and look for a disk unlocker program.
This will unlock the 3TB for you

 

[4745454b]

And as an x58 board you have a bios, not a UEFI.

 

[Jinxie617]

@ Axlmyk - lol! @ lp231 - 4745454b is correct, I have a bios. I have Windows 7 64bit. Thanks for the advice to go to ASRock and look for a disk unlocker program. Guess I'm in for another weekend of rebuilding my program because mirroring doesn't seem to work for us (would be simpler than re-installing everything, but se la vie). Thank you ALL, for helping me with this.

 

[Jinxie617]

Found what I need for the disc unlock program: http://www.asrock.com/feature/3tb/ Thank you so much!