WD 5TB not able to be fully formatted?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

macschwag14

Distinguished
Feb 6, 2009
4
0
18,510
Hi all. I didn't see a similar topic so I made a new thread. Hope that's OK.

I recently bought a 5TB Western Digital My Book external drive (model WDBFJK0050HBK-NESN). I shelled it and popped it into my computer. Windows 10 recognizes the drive as being only 2TB, which it will only format as NTFS in both Disk Manager and EaseUS Partition Manager. According to EaseUS, the additional 2.5TB can either stay unallocated or be turned into a recovery partition. I have no GPT option and neither program will let me extend the volume of my formatted partition (I'm assuming because of the format type) or merge both partitions of the drive to make it the full 5TB.

I have not have this problem with getting a 4TB Toshiba and a 5TB Seagate to show up in their full capacity, so this has got me stumped.

Thanks!
 
Solution
Boogieman_WD
Hey there macschwag14.

It's pretty odd that this would happen with a new drive, basically you should've gotten it properly formatted with the GPT partition table with the full size of the drive being available right away. But don't worry, you should be able to do that by yourself. Here's how:
1. Download DLG (Data Lifeguard Diagnostics) and Write Zeros on the drive (this is basically a low level format). After that your HDD should be recognized by Disk Management as not initialized. How to low level format or write zeros (full erase) to a WD hard drive or Solid State drive. Just make sure to select "Quick Erase" instead of "full", as you won't need that in your case and for a full erase it will take hours to complete.
2...
Sort by date Sort by votes
Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious
Jul 31, 2014
6,050
2
35,960
Hey there macschwag14.

It's pretty odd that this would happen with a new drive, basically you should've gotten it properly formatted with the GPT partition table with the full size of the drive being available right away. But don't worry, you should be able to do that by yourself. Here's how:
1. Download DLG (Data Lifeguard Diagnostics) and Write Zeros on the drive (this is basically a low level format). After that your HDD should be recognized by Disk Management as not initialized. How to low level format or write zeros (full erase) to a WD hard drive or Solid State drive. Just make sure to select "Quick Erase" instead of "full", as you won't need that in your case and for a full erase it will take hours to complete.
2. Initialize the drive and make sure that you select "GPT": How to initialize or write a signature to a secondary hard drive or Solid State drive in Windows
3. Partition and format the hard drive as you see fit: How to partition and format a WD drive on Windows and Mac OSX

I hope this fixes things up. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious
Jul 31, 2014
6,050
2
35,960
Hi Spoke_. I'm really happy that his helped you as well. Don't get me wrong but it's not really recommended to take a drive out of its enclosure as you might lose a lot of data if the drive has hardware encryption, you might be unable to connect it internally if it has a proprietary connector and it voids the HDD's warranty. Of course once you understand the risks, it's up to you to decide what you want to do. :)

Cheers!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
J

JohnH99

Prominent
Apr 25, 2017
1
0
510
You just saved me - had the same problem with a 6TB WD blue drive. I'm sure many others have been helped, but didn't have an account to comment.
I just created an account to say THANKYOU !!
Regards
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom