missing 2tb of 3tb hdd

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deo863

Commendable
Dec 14, 2016
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Purchased a Toshiba 3tb hdd and installed Win 10 on a PC. Found that only 2tb was useable and 756mb unallocated (I now see the numerous topics addressing this, but not until afterward). To try and reformat it to GPT, I took the HDD and hooked it up to my main PC via a HD docking station.

On my main PC, I can only see the 746mb unallocated partition and a smaller partition. There was no 2tb partition. I figured I would reformat the entire hdd so i did so on the main PC but still only the 746 was showing. I then tried putting the hdd back in the other PC to try to do a fresh install of Win10 but before the install started, it still only showed the 746 partition. The 2tb partition was not being detected.

I, again, hooked up the hdd to my main PC via the docking station and tried using a variety of tools to recover the 2tb partition with no luck.

I'm currently using the Wipe Disc Sectors option in MiniTool Partition Wizard to hopefully wipe the entire disc in hopes that it would result in showing up as just one whole 3tb disc... that process is still running.

At this point I just want to be able to see the entire 3tb... I'll deal with the issue of only having 2tb useable on Win10 later.

Can anyone offer any advice?
 
Solution
SuperSoph_WD


I'm glad that you are now able to access the HDD, @deo863!
Unfortunately, though, You need a UEFI-based...
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

Glorious
Jul 30, 2014
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Welcome to Tom's Hardware, @deo863!

It would be really helpful if you share your system specs as well. Since you are planning to boot from the 3 TB HDD, you should be aware that the Windows 10 version needs to be 64-bit and your motherboard has to support UEFI BIOS in order to boot from a GPT HDD. Here's a tutorial from the community, you might find useful, once we get to the bottom of retrieving the whole 3 TB capacity.

I'd advise you to try connecting this HDD as an internal (secondary) drive on a working PC because the external connection could (the dock itself) could have issues reading larger drives. Once you connect the HDD via SATA, check how it appears in Windows' Disk management. Instead of using third-party tools, I'd recommend you delete the volumes/partitions on this HDD there and then re-initialize it in GPT. If you are still facing issues accessing those 3 TB (the 2 TB partition + the 756 GB unallocated space as it would appear in MBR), you should try using your HDD's brand-specific formatting/diagnostic tool and completely erase the drive by writing zeros to it! This procedure will get the HDD back to its default (out-of-the-box) state, so you should be able to start from scratch with it and initialize & format it properly.

Just stay away from third-party external connections in order to do this properly, since you will be using it as a primary/internal HDD. Most external casings are configured with different LBAs which could make the HDD unreadable when connected internally.

Hope this helps you. Keep us posted.
SuperSoph_WD :)
 
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deo863

Commendable
Dec 14, 2016
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So that worked... thx! You guys were correct, the docking station was the problem.

So I formatted the hdd to NTFS GPT and reinstalled it in the other PC. Now I go to install Win10 via USB and when I select the 3tb partition it says "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style."

As mentioned by Super_Soph, looks like this is a mobo issue, correct? That being said, if I want to boot to this hdd on this PC then I'm stuck converting back to MBR and using only 2tb of the hdd.

Any other options? Can I partition out the 3tb to 2tb/1tb and so I can access the entire 3tb?
 
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Paperdoc

Polypheme
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Oct 19, 2006
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Unfortunately, no. The ONLY way to access over 2 TB on a HDD is for the Partitioning to be done with the GPT system. The structure of MBR Partition tables does not allow for addressing any location over 2 TB. So, if you have to use MBR, then you cannot create any Partition over 2TB, nor can use create a second partition that starts after 2 TB and consumes the rest of the space.

And it appears that your laptop does not have UEFI Support in BIOS, so you cannot BOOT from any drive with GPT Partitioning. It has to be MBR style.
 
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SuperSoph_WD

SuperSoph_WD

Glorious
Jul 30, 2014
6,758
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I'm glad that you are now able to access the HDD, @deo863!
Unfortunately, though, You need a UEFI-based BIOS motherboard to actually be able to boot from it. :(
Upgrading the mobo does sound like too much work, though. Another alternative is to get a smaller HDD or an SSD for boot (meaning it will be your primary drive) and you can still use the entire 3 TB if you configure it as a secondary data HDD in the system.

However, if that is not an option at the moment, you should re-initialize the HDD in MBR in order to be able to boot from it and, yes, you will be able to use only 2 TB of the whole 3 TB. However, once in MBR, there's no way to access the other 1 TB. :(

IMHO, getting a smaller primary SSD/HDD and using the 3 TB as a secondary one is the best option you got. Just remember to keep it disconnected from the system while installing Windows onto another drive. Having more than 1 SATA destination drive connected could result in the so-called OS confusion that could lead to more booting issues.

Hope this helps you. Keep us posted if you have more questions or concerns! :)
Cheers,
SuperSoph_WD
 
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