3TB Secondary Drive not working!

T

Turbosound

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 10, 2011
Messages
178
I just purchased a WD cavair green 3TB internal drive to use as a secondary drive for my MKV video files. However after in installed windows 7x64 on my primary drive, As soon as I opened disc management it promted me to initialize the 3TB using MBR or GPT. I selected GPT but the drive is showing up as 746.39GB!

I'm aware that drives larger than 2TB require the GPT partition style and if you want to boot from a drive that is larger than 2TB your motherboard must support UEFI. My motherboard does not support UEFI and was told by WD that I would have no issues using a 3TB drive as a secondary drive using windows 7x64, prior to my purchase.

What exactly is the issue?
I haven't establihed an internet connection yet, and have a lot of windows updates to download/install, can one of the windows updates fix the problem?
I heard that downloading the Intel rapid storage technoligy drivers may fix the problem, are there any other options?

I have a Nforce 650 SLI chipset and my pc is a Dell XPS630i, and therfore dont know if the Intels RST drivers would apply to me.

Thanks
 
The 3tb drive shows up as 3000gb in my phenoix bios so I guees this is a windows 7 issue. please help.
 
Is your installed copy of windows7 SP1? If not, update to SP1 immediately, also you may need this patch which improves windows 7 with older hardware and advanced format drives. In addition to this, make sure you update all your drivers to the latest versions. If your controller does support 3TB drives (which it seems from the BIOS recognition) then these suggestions should fix you up.
 
i will download and install all windows updates including sp1 and see if that makes any differance. why isnt this patch included with windows udate. what drivers do you mean i get everything through windows update.
 
Turbosound said:
i will download and install all windows updates including sp1 and see if that makes any differance. why isnt this patch included with windows udate. what drivers do you mean i get everything through windows update.
Click to expand...

I mean the nvidia nforce drivers (all the latest drivers from the Dell site for your computer as well) among others. Make sure your BIOS is upgraded to the latest version, as well as any/all Option ROM updates. You can find these at http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/Product/xps-630
BIOS 1.0.13 is the latest.
 
SP1 fixed it and yes I have had bios ver 1.0.13 for a few years now. I didnt think sp1 would make a difference since I read somewhere that someone had the same problem with sp1 installed.

This raises another question for me. I originally decided to go with a pair (2) of 2tb drives configured in raid 0 for a total of a 4TB bootable C drive, this way I can have everything all in one place. I figured since I wasnt exceeding the 2tb limit I wouldn't have any issues. After I configured the drives for raid 0 and installed Window 7, the C drive didnt show up as 4TB. Im now wondering if I installed the window updates. Do you think this should work with a motherboard that doesn't support UEFI? If so I will return my 1tb and 3tb drives for my orignal pair of 2tb drives. If you dont think that would work I will keep my 1tb drive and 3tb drive. This would be my first time having a secondary drive should I assign the 3tb drive with a letter or mount in the following empty ntfs folder, what would you go with?

My main goal here is to have all my all my data in one place, and therefore think the raid 0 option would be best. If this cant be done I would like to seperate everything else, (OS, games, music, pictures, programs etc.) from the MKV files. How would you go about this. I dont see my blu ray collection ever exceeding 100 titles, therefore 3tb should be plenty. My music collection wont exceed 160gb and I may end up with 10 plus games, (I guess thats 80gb plus). My picture collection is almost negligable and not sure how much my software (photoshop CS5, wavelab 7, and office 2010 takes up.

I have heard of people getting a solid state drive along with a secondary drive. In most cases do they put everything, (games, music, software, pictures etc) besides the OS on the secondary drive?

Thanks
 
Turbosound said:
SP1 fixed it and yes I have had bios ver 1.0.13 for a few years now. I didnt think sp1 would make a difference since I read somewhere that someone had the same problem with sp1 installed.

This raises another question for me. I originally decided to go with a pair (2) of 2tb drives configured in raid 0 for a total of a 4TB bootable C drive, this way I can have everything all in one place. I figured since I wasnt exceeding the 2tb limit I wouldn't have any issues. After I configured the drives for raid 0 and installed Window 7, the C drive didnt show up as 4TB. Im now wondering if I installed the window updates. Do you think this should work with a motherboard that doesn't support UEFI? If so I will return my 1tb and 3tb drives for my orignal pair of 2tb drives. If you dont think that would work I will keep my 1tb drive and 3tb drive. This would be my first time having a secondary drive should I assign the 3tb drive with a letter or mount in the following empty ntfs folder, what would you go with?

My main goal here is to have all my all my data in one place, and therefore think the raid 0 option would be best. If this cant be done I would like to seperate everything else, (OS, games, music, pictures, programs etc.) from the MKV files. How would you go about this. I dont see my blu ray collection ever exceeding 100 titles, therefore 3tb should be plenty. My music collection wont exceed 160gb and I may end up with 10 plus games, (I guess thats 80gb plus). My picture collection is almost negligable and not sure how much my software (photoshop CS5, wavelab 7, and office 2010 takes up.

I have heard of people getting a solid state drive along with a secondary drive. In most cases do they put everything, (games, music, software, pictures etc) besides the OS on the secondary drive?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Yeah, 99% of the Win7 problems I see (in machines that actually do support it) are non-SP1. If your machine is not UEFI, you are limited to the 2.19GB Boot volume size for MBR.If you had UEFI you could do larger with a GPT. As to how to lay out your daya, put the OS and apps on 1 volume and put all your video on the other volume.
 
Are you saying that a pair of 2TB drives configured in raid 0 will not work on my pc with all the windows 7 updates, including SP1? Are you sure? This would be a bootable 4tb drive, in MBR I think. Please let me know so I can return these drives.

If I were to put the OS and a few programs like I mentioned, (photoshop cs5, wavlab 7, office 2010, kaspersky etc) I wouldnt need a 1 TB drive, that would be overkill. If I were to put all my games, pictures, music, and MKV files, then a 3TB drive wouldn't be large enough. I average about 22gb per mkv using makemkv, so 100 mkv files is right around 2400gb.

When you say volume, I assume your referring to the drives. With the secondary drive do you recommend assigning it a letter or mount in the following empty ntfs folder?

I really would like to understand all my options before making a decision so I can avoid multiple installs. I would perfer the the 4tb raid 0 option if possible, this way everything is all together and less confusing.

Thank you.
 
Without a UEFI board, you are limited to 2.19TB MBR as your boot size, however you accomplish that with 1 drive or 4.
 
I think I understand now, the total size/volume of the combinded drives is what matters and not the size of the independant drives, regaurdless of having all the windows updates including SP1 installed?

Thanks for taking your time explaining that to me.
 
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