Need help to get an "old" PC to see a 4TB HDD

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Sparty_82

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Mar 11, 2015
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I recently purchased a 4TB WD Green HDD for additional video playback storage space inside my 6 year old PC (bleeding edge at the time). It currently connects directly to my MoBo with a 7-pin(?) SATA cable and gets power via a Molex adapter.

When I went to set it up in Windows (Win7 Home Premium 64-bit), it only shows up as a 2TB HDD using either MBR or GPT. I then went into the MoBo BIOS config and it shows up, but again as a 2TB HDD which explains my Win7 behavior. There is no BIOS update that I can find at the mfg's website and I doubt that my MoBo complies with the UEFI spec.

The reason I went for a 4TB HDD is because I have an external 3TB HDD that I regularly connect to this and 3 other PCs (all laptops) in the household for backup. This external drive connects via USB, and this and the other PCs see the entire capacity. Therefore I mistakenly assumed that getting this 4TB HDD to work in this PC would be straightforward.

For possible solutions, I am looking at either:

  • --> Getting a SATA 3 to USB 3 adapter cable that would connect to an internal port on a USB 3 card I installed a couple years ago. My hypothesis is that if this PC can see that external 3TB drive via USB, then connecting it this way will get it to see this internal 4TB drive. Going this route (if it works) means I will sacrifice 1 Gbit/sec data transfer speed. So far the only items that may work via USB 3 per my searching are designed for internal HDDs in an external case (long cables, power adapters, etc.) that would really clutter the interior of my PC. A promising little dongle unfortunately is USB 2.
    --> Getting a SATA 3 adapter card. My hypothesis with this approach is that the BIOS on the adapter card will bypass the MoBo BIOS 2TB limitation. However I don't know if that's true. If true, it'll be a cleaner look than the above route as it just means moving the SATA cable connection from the MoBo to this card.

My goal is to keep this new HDD internal and to see the entire 4TB (3.7GB old school) as one partition. Which option above (or one that I'm not aware of) should I go with and what pitfalls should I aware of?

My apologies for being long-winded and thanks in advance for any help.
 
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Sparty_82

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Wow, 2 replies within a 1/2 hour of posting. That's pretty good and I appreciate the help.

To answer your question: Yes, it'll be only for data.
 
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Sparty_82

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Wow, 2 replies within a 1/2 hour of posting. That's pretty good and I appreciate the help.

I read these links before trying to setup this HDD and again when I was troubleshooting. As I'm not booting from this drive, lack of UEFI is not an issue. Per my Disk Management utility, there's a Disk 0 which is my boot drive (MBR and showing 2 partitions), Disk 1 which is the new 4TB HDD that I want to fully utilize, and listings for the DVD and USB drives. On the Disk 1 listing, it only shows one drive at 2TB capacity. If I initialize using MBR (which I did when I first tried setting it up), I only get one 2TB partition to work with and there is no option to setup a second 2 TB partition on this disk. The same occurred when I tried reconfiguring Disk 1 as GPT. After going insane (trying the same action repeatedly but expecting a different result each time you try) for a short while, I decided to see what the MoBo firmware was seeing regarding this HDD which turns out to be 2TB capacity and I cannot force the value higher in the firmware. Therefore my conclusion that connecting this HDD through the SATA port on the MoBo is the root cause of Win7 Disk Mgmt utility not seeing the true capacity.

In an earlier post, what do you mean by "component list"? Be aware that I'm running 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium on this PC (it initially came with 64-bit Vista), and as I implied in my initial post (and in the paragraph above) I believe the issue is a MoBo limitation which I want to work around without replacing the MoBo.

Thanks again for your quick reply.
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Mar 28, 2010
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The component list that I requested is simply the computer components within the PC. That would include the model # of each (motherboard, drives, RAM, PSU, CPU AND GPU).

Also provide as much information on the hard drives that are giving you trouble. Hopefully we can help you get these large drives going.

I'm curious, what do you need such large drives for?
 
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terry4536

terry4536

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Mar 28, 2010
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This web page may be more fine tuned to what you are trying to do. It states that you can have both MBR and GPT on the same system as you have listed. It provides a lot of FAQs on managing these on an older PC.

What about mixing and matching GPT and MBR disks on the same system?
GPT and MBR disks can be mixed on systems that support GPT, as described earlier. However, you must be aware of the following restrictions:
Systems that support UEFI require that boot partition must reside on a GPT disk. Other hard disks can be either MBR or GPT.
Both MBR and GPT disks can be present in a single dynamic disk group. Volume sets can span both MBR and GPT disks.
Click to expand...

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn640535(v=vs.85).aspx#gpt_faq_win7_boot


I don't think the "SATA 3 adapter card" and the "SATA 3 to USB 3 adapter cable" will have any effect on this problem.
 
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Sparty_82

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Mar 11, 2015
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In short for my situation, the "SATA to USB 3 adapter" is the solution that works with the least amount of hassle.

I tried a SATA adapter card that unbeknownst to me when I purchased it disables the SATA ports on the MoBo which in turn prevented my system from booting as the boot HD connects to the MoBo. Moving the boot HD connection to the adapter did allow the PC to boot into Windows Safe Mode from which I could not escape. There probably is a solution to this but that involves more time than I want to devote. Fortunately I was able to return the adapter card for a full refund.

Getting a SATA to USB 3 adapter also proved useful in that it also has an IDE connector. Before connecting the 4TB HD, I used this adapter to get about 200GB of files off a couple old HDs.
 
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fzabkar

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Sep 22, 2010
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ISTM that the BIOS limitation would be immaterial for a non-booting drive. After the system boots, I would think that the SATA driver would then control access to the drive. Therefore I would look for the latest driver update for the motherboard's (model?) SATA controller, eg Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

If the updated driver allows Windows to see the full capacity of the drive, I would partition it in GPT mode, but I would recommend splitting the drive into 2TiB and 1.6 TiB partitions.
 
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