3tb drive is only 2tb?

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Sarin-

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Apr 13, 2016
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Bought a Western Digital blue 3tb fresh installed windows 7 64bit.
Stuck with 2tbs

My motherboard is a Gigabyte Z97P-D3 I'm guessing I can't ever use the full 3tbs?
Would installing Windows 10 help?.
It's my only drive.

 
Solution
K


I think you would need to make sure that the drive is setup as a GPT drive rather than an MBR drive. MBR only allows a max partition size of 2TB. Windows 7 probably defaults to MBR. To boot from a GPT disk in Windows 7, you need to have your motherboard in UEFI only mode (no BIOS Emulation) and you need to be using Windows 7 Ultimate x64. If you don't have that, then you will need to get windows 10, Windows 7 only supports GPT booting when you're in UEFI mode on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 ( x86 version will not...
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DSzymborski

DSzymborski

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Nov 19, 2010
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When you formatted the hard drive, did you chose MBR or GPT? If the former, you're limited to 2 TB a partition.
 
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Sarin-

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Apr 13, 2016
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I had no option? I bought it plugged it in and booted it with Windows 7 genuine trial install on a USB. I never got or saw a options for that.
It's NTFS when I check

Heres a picture
 
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K

Khaydin1

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May 26, 2017
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I think you would need to make sure that the drive is setup as a GPT drive rather than an MBR drive. MBR only allows a max partition size of 2TB. Windows 7 probably defaults to MBR. To boot from a GPT disk in Windows 7, you need to have your motherboard in UEFI only mode (no BIOS Emulation) and you need to be using Windows 7 Ultimate x64. If you don't have that, then you will need to get windows 10, Windows 7 only supports GPT booting when you're in UEFI mode on Windows 7 Ultimate x64 ( x86 version will not work).

So yes, getting windows 10 should help. You would need a to do a fresh windows 10 install and remove all partitions and make sure the setup changes it to a GPT disk. You will have to look that process up, i believe it can be done with the Diskpart utility. Might be easiest to do if you hook that drive up to an already working computer.


 
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ArtPog

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Sep 17, 2014
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As you have heard from a number of responders to your query, I assume you now understand that the fact that your 3 TB HDD (which apparently is serving as your Win 7 boot drive) was not GPT-partitioned is the cause of the problem you related.

Unfortunately there's no reliable way at this point we've encountered to convert that boot disk from MBR to GPT without the loss of data - which would ultimately involve the need to reinstall your Win 7 OS as Khaydin has indicated.

However...

Since you have indicated a possibility of upgrading from Win 7 to Win 10 you may be in luck. Microsoft recently released the "Windows Creators Update" for Win 10. See...
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

One of the features of this update is the "MBR2GPT Conversion Tool" which would allow you to convert your MBR-partitioned boot drive to GPT (after the Win 10 OS has been installed on the drive of course) without the loss of any data. We've had a chance to use this "tool" recently on a number of Win 10 MBR-partitioned boot drives and the simple operation performed without a hitch.

So this may be something for you to consider.
 
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