Motherboard won't boot with new HDD connected

PV · Dec 10, 2014

Good day,

I own a quite old computer built on a DFI Lanparty NF4 SLI-DR... old but until now almost problems free.

I bought a 3TB Western Digital Black recently and just proceeded installing it. I connected it with my other SSD (512 gb) and storage HDD (512 gb), boot up windows and everything is fine.

I now partion the disk into a large 3tb, 64k allocation size ntfs partition and copy over my data from the 512gb to the 3tb partition. Files are copied, I close the computer, disconnect the 512gb, boot up and the BIOS stalls after recognizing the SATA units.

I tried multiple things but the only thing that seems to work was to disconnect the 3tb hdd, boot, and reconnect the sata after the bios starts... that way I do get the computer to boot and windows to recognize the disk but ... it's not exactly convenient.

Is it that my BIOS can't recognize past a certain partition size??? if so any clue what that partition could be? I'm on the latest BIOS version available on the DFI support website so not sure what to do with this other then never closing the computer ever again

Thanks!

P.S. The partition use a GUID Partition Table

Bezzell · Dec 10, 2014

Needs to be a GPT partition on a UEFI enabled motherboard. DFI Lanparty won't know what to do with that drive. Should recognize it as a 2gb drive though. Strange.

SuperSoph_WD · Dec 10, 2014

Hey there, PV!

I'm sorry to hear you struggle with the 3 TB WD Black.

Bezzell is right, you need to convert it from MBR disk to GPT disk in order to be recognized properly.
Here's everything you need to know about the 3TB drives: http://www.pcworld.com/article/235088/everything-you-need-to-know-about-3tb-hard-drives.html
What is your OS? Is it a 32-bit or 64-bit one?
Here's a guide about installing a second HDD to your system that might be useful as well: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/265764-32-guide-installed-disk-system

Keep me posted! Hope this helps!

SuperSoph_WD

PV · Dec 10, 2014

SuperSoph_WD :

well the disk is partitionned as GPT :/ see my "P.S." My OS is Win7 32 bits

Also the drive is recognized by the BIOS it simply won't continue booting after the SATA were detected

PV · Dec 10, 2014

Found the solution to the problem!

So it would appear that my motherboard is too old to support drives with a GPT partition style. I first tried shrinking the GPT partition to 2 TB but the computer would still not boot. I ended up using diskpart to delete the volume and then convert to mbr. Doing this automatically converted the volume into 2 smaller volumes: 2.0 TB and 746.52 GB one.

I created a new partition in that 2 TB volume: NTFS 64k allocation units, and it worked!

Thanks for the help guys!

SuperSoph_WD · Dec 10, 2014

PV :

Yeah, sorry, I just saw that one.
Well, 32-bit Windows operating systems can read and write to GTP HDDs over 2 TB, but unfortunately they cannot boot from them. Booting is supported only by 64-bit versions on UEFI-based systems.
[Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn640535%28v=vs.85%29.aspx#X-201104111922342]
You have several options to change the OS to a 64-bit version or to connect the drive using an enclosure, because the SATA-to-USB bridge takes care of the addressing issue. Or you need to partition the drive in order to use it. Check the article in my previous post.

Hope this helped.
SuperSoph_WD

[EDIT:]
P.S. Sorry, was typing while you found the solution yourself!
Good luck and happy computing!

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