Windows 7 and 4TB Hard Drive

[icmk]

I seem to be running into trouble with getting W7 to work with a WD Red 4TB, I would be grateful if someone can point out my errors.

After I connected and initialized the drive as a GPT disk, W7 reported it as a 1.67TB partition. DISKPART, EASEUS/Paragon PMs all reported the same so I used GPARTED to format it as a 4TB NTFS drive. Reboot back to W7 which now see all 4TB in a single partition, so I assumed that everything was fine.

Used ROBOCOPY to populate the drive overnight with about 2TB of data. But the next day W7 reports the drive as not accessible. Thought I must have received a bad drive so I ran an extended Data LifeGuard test. But WinDLG reported NO error.

However W7 now report the drive as unformatted and want to format it. So I ran the EASEUS/Paragon PMs and some parts of them see the 4TB, other parts see only 1.67TB. DISKPART reports different sizes too.

This is the output from DISKPART:

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 2 Online 1678 GB 0 B *
Disk 3 Online 223 GB 0 B

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- -------
Volume 0 R DVD-ROM 0 B No Media
Volume 1 G Black NTFS Partition 931 GB Healthy Pagefil
Volume 2 H Blue NTFS Partition 931 GB Healthy
Volume 3 D NTFS Partition 3726 GB Healthy
Volume 4 C Root NTFS Partition 223 GB Healthy System

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 3726 GB 1024 KB


I've Googled the problem but most of them seem to involve initializing the drive as a MBR disk. I'd be truly thankful if someone can give me some help on this.

 

[eidairaman1]

you need to install windows 7 fresh on the drive with no other drives attached

 

[icmk]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm using the 4TB strictly as a data drive. Actually I'm just attaching it to my desktop to copy backed up data onto it. Its final destination will be a Hyper-V server.

 

[Solaris17]

the partition map is damaged because you keep using diffirent programs

clean the disk using disk part and then re format it and init as GPT

 

[icmk]

Thanks for the reply, happy 4th to you.

DISKPART | clean | convert gpt gives me a 1.67TB disk. Am I using the wrong commands/arguments?


DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 931 GB 0 B
* Disk 2 Online 1678 GB 1678 GB
Disk 3 Online 223 GB 0 B

DISKPART> convert gpt

DiskPart successfully converted the selected disk to GPT format.

DISKPART> list disk

Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 931 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 931 GB 0 B
* Disk 2 Online 1678 GB 1677 GB *
Disk 3 Online 223 GB 0 B

 

[Solaris17]

yes your converting clear it again and handle the rest in disk manager

 

[icmk]

DISKPART | clean, DISKMGMT.MSC initialize as GPT disk.

Same result, 1.67TB disk. 8-(

Edit: Just to add that it's W7 64bit and the system has dealt with a number of 3TB drives without problem before but it's the 1st 4TB and WD Red.

 

[eidairaman1]

Killdisk to completely wipe it

 

[icmk]

Found out what's causing the probem.

It's the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. Once I've uninstalled it W7/DISLPART/etc see the whole 4TB.

Thanks everyone for their replies.

 

[Solaris17]

Found out what's causing the probem.

It's the Intel Matrix Storage Manager. Once I've uninstalled it W7/DISLPART/etc see the whole 4TB.

Thanks everyone for their replies.

Thanks for letting us know what it was.

 

[eidairaman1]

Might want to see if there is an update to it

 

[Steevo]

I was just going to suggest the mobo or the disk driver chipset driver may not handle it correctly.

 

[Scott-Geek]

I had the same problem. No matter what I did I could not see beyond 1687 GB
* Disk 2 Online 1678 GB 1677 GB *

This will be a secondary drive for me too.
I tried all of the above to no avail.

When I was ready to give up, thinking my 6-year old system (Alienware X58 with Asus P6T Deluxe MB with Marvell Raid Controller) would not handle the drive, I went through WD pages about the drive, and saw Windows 7 support as long as you have the latest Intel drive:

Do I need a special driver to install a WD Advanced Format Drive on an Intel chipset?

If your operating system is either Windows 7 or Vista, we recommend the following for maximum performance in all situations:

• For Intel chipset, use the latest Intel driver version 9.6 or later. Please visit Intel for the latest driver downloads at http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-031502.htm

This surprised me since I still see the WD Green 4TB drive appearing during bios boot disk list with 1687 GB.

Hope this helps other people looking for this solution.