WD Black 4TB only reading as 2TB's?

Neostarwcc · Oct 7, 2015

Okay so, I just purchased a WD Black 4TB drive and got it last night, I immediately installed the drive and put an OS on it (Win 7). I noticed during Win 7 installation that the drive was reading as 3.6 TB. So, I created a 3.6 TB partition. Windows installed successfully on the drive but, then when I booted onto my SSD I noticed that the drive was only reading as 2 TB (1.99 to be more exact). It doesn't really seem normal to cut a drives capacity in half. I've tried everything including going on the Windows 7 partition directly and, nothing. It still reads as 1.99 TB's on Windows 7 as well. Should I just reinstall windows 7 and think that this was a fluke and maybe I made the partition 1.99 TB's instead of 3.6? (Why would I though?) or maybe Windows 7 is too old of an OS to read 4TB drives? Or what? This is really weird. I'm using a Maximus VII Hero motherboard.

Drive C is my SSD, Drive D is the 1.5 TB green drive that I was talking about in a previous post so, It didn't split into 2 partitions like I originally thought I forgot to take that drive out (oops). And drive F is a 1 TB blue that I just use for extra storage.

ATMINSIDE · Oct 7, 2015

You need to be running GPT instead of MBR for over 2TB drives to register.

Mighty_Miro_WD · Oct 7, 2015

Neostarwcc said:
Okay so, I just purchased a WD Black 4TB drive and got it last night, I immediately installed the drive and put an OS on it (Win 7). I noticed during Win 7 installation that the drive was reading as 3.6 TB. So, I created a 3.6 TB partition. Windows installed successfully on the drive but, then when I booted onto my SSD I noticed that the drive was only reading as 2 TB (1.99 to be more exact). It doesn't really seem normal to cut a drives capacity in half. I've tried everything including going on the Windows 7 partition directly and, nothing. It still reads as 1.99 TB's on Windows 7 as well. Should I just reinstall windows 7 and think that this was a fluke and maybe I made the partition 1.99 TB's instead of 3.6? (Why would I though?) or maybe Windows 7 is too old of an OS to read 4TB drives? Or what? This is really weird. I'm using a Maximus VII Hero motherboard.

Drive C is my SSD, Drive D is the 1.5 TB green drive that I was talking about in a previous post so, It didn't split into 2 partitions like I originally thought I forgot to take that drive out (oops). And drive F is a 1 TB blue that I just use for extra storage.

Hi mate.

Are you using an MBR partition table? If so you have to switch to GPT in order to use the full 4TB storage space of the drive because MBR limits to 2TB of the volume.

You can use this KB article describing the steps to do so:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725671.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

Hope this helps and let us know how it went.

Cheers!

Neostarwcc · Oct 8, 2015

Oh, I never bought a HDD over 2TB's before so I didn't know. I fixed it and it's properly showing up as 3.6 TB's now but now, It's not allowing me to install windows 7 on the new GPT Partition it says "Cannot Install Windows on a GPT Partition". I've googled the issue and it's telling me to make yet another partition. Only problem with that is, I already carried over 1TB of irreplaceable data onto the drive :-/

.

Suppose I could burn the data onto blurays but, I'd rather not if I don't have to. One option would be to install Windows 10 since, from what I've googled W10 doesn't seem to have this issue. So do I have to install windows 10 on this drive and maybe install 7 on my SSD?

WD Black 4TB only reading as 2TB's?

Neostarwcc

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ATMINSIDE

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Mighty_Miro_WD

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Neostarwcc

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