Windows not Recognizing full 4Tb SSD/HD Hybrid Drive ( SOLVED )

Anyone know of an easy fix?

Thursday, September 24, 2015 by AceMatrix | Discussion: Personal Computing

I just recently purchased a 4Tb SSD/HD Hybrid drive. It's the best of both worlds in terms of speed and capacity. The only problem is that Windows 7 64bit does not register higher than 2Tb on a hard drive. I've Googled for answers but the posts are old and most of the solutions I found were either too confusing or they simply did not work for me. Does anyone have any experience with this issue or know of a fix that is easy to apply to resolve this issue? Any help would be tremendously appreciated. Thank-you.      -- ACE --

P.S. - By the way, I do have the drive installed and it is working beautifully, the only problem is that I have an extra 2Tb of space on the drive that Windows does not see. (just a clarification)

harpo99999
Reply #1 Thursday, September 24, 2015 5:28 PM

did you set the BIOS to use ahci mode or is it still in ide mode?

another thought is the drive still in MBR mode or gpt mode (settings in windows partitioning) the gpt should allow partition sizes beyond 2tb while mbr does not

HarPo the GhOSt NON-subscriber

alaknebs
Reply #2 Thursday, September 24, 2015 6:57 PM

look at the software and manual the drive comes with.. usually something there.

eg

http://www.seagate.com/gb/en/support/downloads/beyond-2tb/

 

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/i-have-a-3-tb-drive-windows-7-ultimate-wont-format/b1cc3811-f25f-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5?auth=1

RedneckDude
Reply #3 Thursday, September 24, 2015 7:01 PM

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/i-have-a-3-tb-drive-windows-7-ultimate-wont-format/b1cc3811-f25f-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5?auth=1

 

 

 

From the above MS Forum thread:

 
"To use any drive over 2.19 TB you will need:
  • A computer using Windows Vista or later (Windows XP isn't compatible with GPT formatted disks, so it can't see them)
  • A sata controller that is compatible (to find out if it is compatible, find out what motherboard or add-on board SATA controller you have and google it-e.g.  Intel ICH8 3TB )
  • A drive that is larger than 2.19 TB
So, if you know that you meet all three of the above requirements, follow proper installation procedures with installing a new drive and just hook it up.  Depending on where you bought the drive and if it is OEM or Retail it may or may not come pre-formatted with an NTFS partition of 2TB (this is for convenience to keep people from getting upset when they hook the drive up and it doesn't appear in My Computer).
 
Now, go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management.  Choose Disk Management on the left and you should see in the lower portion of the screen a list of your installed drives.  The larger drive should appear in the list with a capacity displaying on the left.  Note, a 3TB drive will only have a storage capacity of LOWER than 3TB (read: when you add formatting and a file system, both of those require space on the drive, so you will not have a full 3TB of space to use-this is the nature of hard drives-you will never have the full stated capacity-ever since it is required to make the drive useable).
 
Now, assuming you're using it as a data storage drive, ensure that nothing is still stored on it and right click on the partition on the right, right click the partition (if there is one on the drive already) and click "Delete Volume".
 
Next, right click on the name on the left "Disk #" and choose "Convert to GPT Disk".  Now this should allow you to right click on the unformatted  space on the right and to create a new partition which can hold the full available capacity of your drive.
 
This should work with all versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7 (with the only exception being a starter edition *may not*).
 
With the variety of systems now sold using UEFI instead of BIOS, you can today on those systems install Windows directly onto a drive greater than 2.19TB in size.  Just ensure that your computer actually is using it before attempting to run Windows on a drive that large.  It's also probably not a great idea just due to the fact that if Windows fails you will likely lose all the data on that partition."
RedneckDude
Reply #4 Thursday, September 24, 2015 7:05 PM

Well, shit, I am slow.....

AceMatrix
Reply #5 Thursday, September 24, 2015 10:05 PM

Thank-you all for assisting me. I will try all the suggestions posted here and update this post as to my results. So much work to do ,so little time....                      -- Ace ---

AceMatrix
Reply #6 Friday, September 25, 2015 8:49 PM

O.K. , I'm finally finished fixing this issue. It has been a long and frustrating journey, full of missteps, but the results are in and I couldn't be happier. First let me just say that I had to incorporate all of your suggestions, and then some, to get this problem fixed, so once again I want to say thank you to everyone who has responded. I made all the necessary changes in the bios ( thank-you harpo ) and with the information gained from the posted links (thank-you Jim & alaknebs) I discovered that I don't have the required UEFI Bios that is needed to allow use of a larger than 2TB HD. UEFI compatible motherboards have only been available since 2011. My motherboard is dated from 2008.(guess I need a motherboard upgrade in my things to do list). Thankfully Seagate offers a free DiscWizard software solution for the problem. It takes the unseen volume and creates a virtual drive that has the same capacity as the unseen volume. In the Computer folder it appears just like a separate physical drive even though its part of the same drive. So now , as it appears in the Computer folder, I have 2 x 2TB drives instead of just 1 x 4 TB drive. This is actually much better for me in terms of organization of stored data. I couldn't be happier with the results. Once again, thank-you everyone for your wonderful assistance  . Now I'm off to get some much needed sleep, this has been a lot of work...LOL !        -- Ace --

RedneckDude
Reply #7 Saturday, September 26, 2015 12:37 AM

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