How do I get the full 3TB volume?

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Sgt_Strider

Gawd
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Oct 29, 2003
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I recently bought a Seagate 3TB HDD. I know that in order to get the full 3TB volume, I'll have to format it with GPT. I also have Windows 7 64-bit installed. Under Disk Management, there are two volumes. One is 2047.9 GB and the other is 746.52 GB. Can someone tell me how to merge the two volumes and then format it with GPT so that I get the full 3TB? I only intend to use this as a "data drive". The OS will boot off an SSD.
 
You need to your ensure your hardware can support 3TB drives. Most likely if your system is more then a year old, it will need a bios update.
 
my BIOS is from 2010 and I didn't need to update it. are the two volumes that show up without any partition scheme?
 
you'll need to delete the 2nd partition, then expand the 1st partition to use up the freespace.
 
Did you create the two volumes that are on the drive and is there any data you need on the drive? If no, then delete the two partitions and then just create a single GPT partition rather than extending one of the existing partitions which are probably not GPT anyway. If you have data you need on the drive, move it off (obviously) and then do what I suggested above.
 
Cheetoz said:
my BIOS is from 2010 and I didn't need to update it. are the two volumes that show up without any partition scheme?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by partition scheme. I just bought the Seagate drive, installed it, and that's it. I see those two volumes. I just want to delete them and format it as a GPT drive so that I get my full 3TB.
 
Help? I can't seem to delete the two volumes from Windows. Not even Seagate's FAQs got me where I want to be.
 
Go to Start>Settings>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. For the 3TB drive in question, Right-Click on each of the 2 volumes on that drive and choose delete. Once those are gone, you can right click on the drive and choose New Volume, Choose GPT and use all the space available.
 
They probably pre-formatted the drive that way for maximum compatibility.

Computer Management.....get comfortable with it, its a great tool :)

If your in Win 7 you can also just type computer management in the search box in the Start menu.
 
westrock2000 said:
They probably pre-formatted the drive that way for maximum compatibility.

Computer Management.....get comfortable with it, its a great tool :)

If your in Win 7 you can also just type computer management in the search box in the Start menu.
Click to expand...

It's much better to just load up Disk Management because that's what I'll have to click from Computer Management anyways.

I can't delete any of the volumes to merge them into 3TB. This is really starting to piss me off!
 
mwroobel said:
Go to Start>Settings>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management. For the 3TB drive in question, Right-Click on each of the 2 volumes on that drive and choose delete. Once those are gone, you can right click on the drive and choose New Volume, Choose GPT and use all the space available.
Click to expand...

Do you have this drive?

It doesn't work. There is no option to delete because there isn't a volume per se. Right now it just says 2047.90GB unallocated. 746.52GB unallocated as well. However, it does say 2794.52GB and it's online. The option to convert it to GPT is greyed out. This is really starting to piss me off! I've never been in a situation like this before!
 
Seagate's DiscWizard is awful. Trying to use it doesn't do what their website says it'll do. I keep on getting an error message telling me to use Extended Capacity Manager to remove these discs and then restart this wizard to convert a partition style to GPT. The problem is that I can't remove any of these discs from DiscWizard
 
Sgt_Strider said:
Gigabyte Z68 mobo.
Click to expand...

That narrows it down to like 20 motherboards... you'll have to do better than that.

All Gigabyte Z68 boards support UEFI (through their 'hybrid EFI' technology) and in theory you shouldn't have trouble using the full capacity of a 2.2+TB drive in a single partition.

1. Have you tried right clicking on the 'unallocated' partitions in Drive Management and clicking 'Delete' from the pop-up menu that follows?
2. What connector/controller is the drive in question connected to, an Intel hosted controller or one of the extra Gigabyte JMicron controlled ports?
3. Assuming an Intel controlled port, have you made the appropriate setting changes in the BIOS? Namely enabling AHCI and disabling legacy ATA options?
 
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Something doesn't look right too. I think I may know why I can't convert the two volumes to GPT. I'm sure most of you guys know that Windows 7 creates a 100MB partition on the primary drive. The weird part is that I see that 100MB partition in the HDD. How did that happen? I know for a fact that I picked the SSD as the primary drive to install Windows 7. Yet, I don't see that partition on the SSD and instead it's on the HDD.

What's going on?
 
Blue Falcon said:
That narrows it down to like 20 motherboards... you'll have to do better than that.

All Gigabyte Z68 boards support UEFI (through their 'hybrid EFI' technology) and in theory you shouldn't have trouble using the full capacity of a 2.2+TB drive in a single partition.

1. Have you tried right clicking on the 'unallocated' partitions in Drive Management and clicking 'Delete' from the pop-up menu that follows?
2. What connector/controller is the drive in question connected to, an Intel hosted controller or one of the extra Gigabyte JMicron controlled ports?
3. Assuming an Intel controlled port, have you made the appropriate setting changes in the BIOS? Namely enabling AHCI and disabling legacy ATA options?
Click to expand...

I have the Gigabyte Z68X UD3H-B3.

1. Yes and I can't delete the unallocated partitions.
2. It's connected to the Intel controller.
3. I don't see a specific option to disable the legacy ATA options, but AHCI is enabled and the SATA ports are operating in native IDE mode instead of legacy IDE.

I'm getting very frustrated with this!!!
 
Sgt_Strider said:


Something doesn't look right too. I think I may know why I can't convert the two volumes to GPT. I'm sure most of you guys know that Windows 7 creates a 100MB partition on the primary drive. The weird part is that I see that 100MB partition in the HDD. How did that happen? I know for a fact that I picked the SSD as the primary drive to install Windows 7. Yet, I don't see that partition on the SSD and instead it's on the HDD.

What's going on?
Click to expand...

Maybe because the HDD is disk 0.
 
If your right click on the unallocated space, do you have any options OTHER THAN help and properties? I have seen weird partition problems occur, especially if there is some incompatibility with the drive. If you can't do it it disk management, get a copy of the Free Easus Partition Manager at http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm and try to delete the unallocated partitions there.
 
I'm not an expert, but it looks like windows 7 put its 100MB boot partition thingy on your 3TB drive. That probably explains why you can't delete partitions and such while you are running Windows. I don't really see an easy fix here. If it were mine, I would start all over, install windows on the SSD with only the SSD installed, leaving the 3TB out while the install happens. When that is done, plug in the 3TB and try again... but thats just me...
 
Yup. I think that's exactly what's going on... I hate when Windows does that kind of shit. In an ideal world with a perfect EFI BIOS and controller combination, having a primary drive with a 2.2+ TB partition shouldn't be an issue, but it often times is. To use that drive as 'storage' and with a single large partition that takes up the entire drive, you are going to have to make sure it's not the first drive listed.

Sometimes you can fix this by playing around with options in the BIOS but honestly at this point I would physically disconnect the 3TB drive, swap the SATA cable it was using to the SSD, reinstall windows on the SSD (leaving the 3TB drive disconnected), and then finally once Windows is installed I would connect the 3TB drive using the SATA cable that was connected to the SSD in the beginning (so in the end you've swapped the data cables around).
 
Shot in the dark, but have you tried right clicking on Disk 0 and initializing it?
 
Windows sometimes installs that stupid 100MB partition on a different drive other than the boot drive during installation. No idea what the logic is for doing so. Ideal way is to install with only your boot drive connected (I myself messed this up with my current install, as I had both my data HDDs connected and now have the 100MB on my boot SSD).

Disk Manager does not like letting you modify partitions on the system drive, or any drive it associates with system (100MB partition included). Very annoying.
 
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