Can't partition unallocated space on 3TB hard drive.

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
G

Guest

Guest
Hi,

Just built a new system. Running windows 10 64 bit. I have a 3TB Seagate HDD. I forgot to partition at the beginning of the windows 10 installation. I went in to the disk manager and created two 1TB partitions. My problem is that I have 746 GB of unallocated space that I would like to be able to use as a third partition. The problem is that when I go to select "new simple volume" it is grayed out and cannot do anything with it. My drive is still MBR so not sure if I would need to change that first in order to access that last bit of space. If that is the case the option to change the hard drive to GBT is also grayed out so I am unable to do this at the time.
 
Solution
Boogieman_WD
Hey there, Transphixa.

Your drive should definitely use the GPT partition table, as MBR does not allow larger volumes than 2.2TB. Basically by clicking on the drive with the right-mouse button you should be able to click on convert to GPT. However if this is greyed out, delete both partition you have already created by clicking with the right-mouse button on them and selecting "delete volume" and try to convert the drive to GPT once again. If you still can't do that, try the following:
Open CMD (Command Prompt as administrator)
Type in diskpart and press "enter"
Type list disk and press "enter"
Then check which drive is the one you want to select (the 3TB one) and type "select disk X" (where X is the number of the drive you...
Sort by date Sort by votes
Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious
Jul 31, 2014
6,050
2
35,960
Hey there, Transphixa.

Your drive should definitely use the GPT partition table, as MBR does not allow larger volumes than 2.2TB. Basically by clicking on the drive with the right-mouse button you should be able to click on convert to GPT. However if this is greyed out, delete both partition you have already created by clicking with the right-mouse button on them and selecting "delete volume" and try to convert the drive to GPT once again. If you still can't do that, try the following:
Open CMD (Command Prompt as administrator)
Type in diskpart and press "enter"
Type list disk and press "enter"
Then check which drive is the one you want to select (the 3TB one) and type "select disk X" (where X is the number of the drive you wish to choose, e.g. "select disk 1") and press "enter"
Once you've done that, type clean and press "enter"

This process, along with everything already suggested, is data destructive, so you should backup any data which you might have on that drive, prior to trying out any of the suggestions. So, once this process is complete (it shouldn't take too long), the drive would be at a state which where it is not initialized. You just have to click on it with the right-mouse button and select "initialize" and then you'll be prompted to select MBR or GPT. Click on GPT and complete the wizard. Now you should be left with the whole drive's capacity as "unallocated" space, which you can partition and format as you see fit.

However if this is the main drive (the one with the OS), I'm afraid you might have to reinstall your OS from scratch unless there's a 3rd party program which can convert the HDD to GPT, without you losing any information, so that you can use the rest of the storage capacity.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom