4.0TB GPT WD hard drive only showing as 1.6TB

AlanDonegan · Jun 26, 2014

I have just installed a brand new internal 4.0TB Western Digital Green hard drive in my PC. I have formatted it as GPT and it only shows up as 1.63 TB.

I have scoured the internet for advice.
I have updated all the drivers on my PC including the Intel ones. I have re-formatted the hard drive and am at a loss as what to do next.

Can you help me please?

a44arana · Jun 26, 2014

im sure this has been answered already here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1696373/4tb-hard-drive-2tb.html

the last comment from above also links to here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1735515/installed-windows-3tb-hdd-registers-2tb-hard-drive.html

fzabkar · Jun 26, 2014

It appears that there is a 32-bit LBA limitation, either in BIOS or in the SATA driver.

Either update the BIOS or the driver, as necessary.

kenrivers · Jun 26, 2014

If you look at the drive in disk management does the rest of the drive show up as unallocatd?

AlanDonegan · Jun 27, 2014

Kenrivers, thanks for your reply. It does not show up as unallocated. Nothing shows up at all. It shows the maximum disk size is 1.63TB.

fzabkar, thank you for your answer I have 64bit Windows 7 installed on my machine and have updated everything I can find to update!

144arana: I have read both those articles before positing and neither fixed my problem. Both those problems refer to having windows boot from the hard drive. I just want to use it as a storage drive. Both also say it is there but unallocated. Mine doesn't show up at all.

Thanks for your help!

kenrivers · Jun 27, 2014

If you don't have any data on the drive you could try deleting the partition and reformatting the drive. Make sure to check how much space is allocated to the partition during this process. If it will not allow you to set the max to close to 4TB (it won't be exactly 4TB because of the way drive manufacturers state the space and the way Windows actually reads drive space) then you may need to return the drive for an exchange.

fzabkar · Jun 27, 2014

The specification sheet for WD's 4TB drives states that ...

User sectors per drive (WD4000FYYZ) = 7,814,037,168

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771444.pdf

Converting to hexadecimal ...

7 814 037 168 = 0x1D1C0BEB0 sectors

http://www.google.com/search?q=7%2C814%2C037%2C168+in+hex

After stripping off the 33rd bit we have ...

0xD1C0BEB0 = 3 519 069 872 sectors

http://www.google.com/search?q=0xD1C0BEB0+in+decimal

Converting this into a capacity in TiB ...

0xD1C0BEB0 x 512 bytes = 1.639 terabytes

http://www.google.com/search?q=0xD1C0BEB0+x+512+bytes+in+TB

Therefore it does appear that the 33rd bit is being ignored.

Can you post the Identify Device information that is reported by CrystalDiskInfo? This will confirm that the drive is reporting its full capacity, and that it hasn't been truncated by a HPA.

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

CrystalDiskInfo has a Text Copy feature.

First go to Edit -> Copy Option and select Identify Device. Then go to Edit -> Copy. This will copy the disk information to the clipboard. Then open up NotePad or whichever word processor ships with your version of Windows, and choose Edit -> Paste (or Ctrl-V) to input the clipboard data.

wwasion · Jul 4, 2014

One thing to consider is if the drive is connected via usb. I had the same problem with a WD 4 TB showing as 1.6. After trying everything on this site, Microsoft, and many others, nothing worked. Then I connected it via eSATA and rebooted my system. Then it read the full 4 TB. Created the partition, assigned a drive number, and shut down the pc. Disconnected from eSATA, reconnected with usb, and there it is!

kunthakenthe · Jul 4, 2014

is your mother uefi supported uefi is for 3tb and up.

fzabkar · Jul 4, 2014

@wwasion, I suspect that you have created a time bomb.

When you connect via eSATA, the SATA driver talks directly to the HDD. It appears that this driver is not affected by a 32-bit LBA limitation (it is probably 48-bit LBA aware), in which case it is able to see the full capacity of the drive.

However, when you connect via USB, the OS uses a USB mass storage driver which communicates with the firmware on the USB-SATA bridge PCB inside the enclosure rather than with the HDD directly. It appears that the bridge firmware has a 32-bit LBA limitation.

The end result is that the drive will appear to work fine up until the time you try to write data beyong the 2TiB point. When this happens, the LBAs wrap around to sector 0, trashing your file system.

Pinhedd · Jul 5, 2014

fzabkar :

Yup. USB-ATA bridges are absolute trash. Some are better than others, but there are a huge number of limitations present in USB attached HDDs that are often glossed over. eSATA was designed for this!

DanasaurusRAWR · Aug 24, 2014

Bumping for solution.

I've installed two 4TB WD Green drives (storage only) and they only show up as 1.6TB. OS is Win7 Ultimate

So far I have:

UEFI BIOS set to AHCI (currently set at RAID once I set up Intel Rapid Storage for my OS disks)
Initialised them as GPT/GUID
Run 'clean all' on both drives to reinitialise.

Nothing seems to work. They appear as 3.6TB (or whatever the capacity ends up as) in the BIOS, but nothing I do within Windows seems to work...

kunthakenthe · Aug 24, 2014

if your using the USB-ATA bridge i think you should replace it. Are you saying in windows 7 they only a 1.6th instead of the 3.6tb.

DanasaurusRAWR · Aug 25, 2014

kunthakenthe :

Unsure what the USB-ATA bridge is, I have them in positions SATA6G_34 as shown on page 18 here.

And yes, they are still only showing 1.6TB in Disk Management, not the full 3.7TB that the BIOS can see.

kunthakenthe · Aug 31, 2014

try to see if this helps

http://superuser.com/questions/756577/windows-7-recognizes-4-tb-hard-drive-as-1-6-tb-even-with-recommended-settings

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140225082126AAJmR0k

DanasaurusRAWR · Aug 31, 2014

kunthakenthe :

Thanks, but I've read those two already and neither are relevant. My machine is brand new with very recent parts. The second one doesn't have a solution either.

As an update, WD replied to me and asked that I write zeroes to the disk, which I have done and still have the same result.

I read somewhere about deleting the registry entries for the drive letters that I allocated at the first initialisation, could this fix the issue? I don't know anything about registry entries, so am a bit hesitant to mess with them.

kunthakenthe · Aug 31, 2014

DanasaurusRAWR :

kunthakenthe :

Thanks, but I've read those two already and neither are relevant. My machine is brand new with very recent parts. The second one doesn't have a solution either.

As an update, WD replied to me and asked that I write zeroes to the disk, which I have done and still have the same result.

I read somewhere about deleting the registry entries for the drive letters that I allocated at the first initialisation, could this fix the issue? I don't know anything about registry entries, so am a bit hesitant to mess with them.

hold on.

kunthakenthe · Aug 31, 2014

this should help

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140305022138AAi1OcH

USAFRet · Feb 21, 2021

supermuble said:
I searched everywhere on other sites, and

7 years later.....

Please don't dredge up ancient threads.
Thanks.

4.0TB GPT WD hard drive only showing as 1.6TB

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