Solved! New WD Green 2.5T HDD...something doesn't seem right

Installed a new drive two days ago (WD Green WD25EZRX) and noticed that Windows didn't seem to set it up properly. I'm at work so doing this from memory but here goes. Went into disk management, assigned a drive letter, initialized the disk, created a partition, made it active. When I look at the drive in disk management, the partition shows as being 2.3TB with approximately 230GB of unallocated space.

So, is that large block of unallocated space normal? I really want to squeeze every byte of drive space out of this thing so any help in setting this up is appreciated. Also, if I were to buy one more of these what RAID setup would you recommend to maximize space, speed, and reliability?

Thanks,
Mike

Pretty sure Win 7 MBR is limited to 2tb partitions.
Try making two partitions 2tb or less.

Or you can use a GUID partition table instead of MBR.
Id just make 2 partitions.

If it's going to be Windows-only, make a second partition, convert them both to dynamic disk, then set them up as spanned.

mcoomer said:

Also, if I were to buy one more of these what RAID setup would you recommend to maximize space, speed, and reliability?

Click to expand...

petteyg359 said:

If it's going to be Windows-only, make a second partition, convert them both to dynamic disk, then set them up as spanned.

Click to expand...

Space? Yes. Reliability, no. You'd want RAID1, and you'd have to do that before you write any data to the primary drive as you'd need the second drive installed to create the array. You could always GPT the first drive, make it dynamic, then make the 2nd drive a dynamic mirror of the first drive.

RAID1 requires no parity writes so hardware vs. software - little difference.

cw823 said:

Space? Yes. Reliability, no. You'd want RAID1, and you'd have to do that before you write any data to the primary drive as you'd need the second drive installed to create the array. You could always GPT the first drive, make it dynamic, then make the 2nd drive a dynamic mirror of the first drive.

RAID1 requires no parity writes so hardware vs. software - little difference.

Click to expand...

I was talking about one drive, since he doesn't have a second drive yet. I was suggesting a way to not have to switch to GPT, but still have the full capacity available. Obviously, if Dynamic Disks don't allow layered sets, and he wants to add a second disk in RAID, he'll have to switch to GPT.

Hmmmm...I wonder what make GPT disk does?































Palm to forehead! My wife is right, again. Sometimes I am an idiot.

mcoomer said:

Palm to forehead! My wife is right, again.

Click to expand...

Lol, they usually are. Just cant let them know that they are right too often haha.

Glad you got it figured out.

So what was the solution? Last time I looked, you had pic's posted of the diskmgmt.msc snap-in open, w/ the available context menu options shown for each partition.

Yeah. I posted those pics and about two seconds after that had an epiphany. Onefstsnake mentioned GUID Partition Table in his post above, I saw GPT as an option when I right clicked on the drive, but it took a while for the bowling ball that holds my brain to connect the acronym what he said in his post. Definitely a Forrest Gump moment. So, I went back into Disk Management, converted the disk to GPT, formatted and now I have nearly 2.4TB of useable space.

Mike