Cannot Fully Format Seagate 1.5TB ST31500341AS

So I'm having an issue with my new 1.5 Terabyte Seagate drive, the most I can format out of it is 1020Gigs, leaving a vast chunk unused.

I don't know what the issue is, I've updated my BIOS and Mobo Drivers and checked everything I can think of with no luck.
I don't know what it could be, I'm sure it's something simple but at the moment I just can't think of what it is.

My comp specs are:
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450
eVga 780i Mobo
4 Gigs PC-6400 Mushkin DDR2
Dual eVga GeForce 260's in SLI
1 x 80 Gig SATA Maxtor
1 x 1TB SATA Hitachi
1 x 1.5TB SATA Seagate (the problem drive)

Running Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2

Lemme know if I missed anything.

Anyways, hope one of you guys can help, as I am at a complete loss.

And there is some info here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Seagate-Barrac [...] 13003r3416

what if you make a second partition with those 300Gb. Is that possible?

jitpublisher suggests a BIOS update is needed, and refers to older solutions like DDO's. He / she is right in one sense - you do not want to play with DDO's these days - it should be done with the right BIOS.

On the other hand, a BIOS update for large drives usually refers to the change from 28-bit to 48-bit LBA support. That is what allows you to go above the 137 GB size up to petabytes, whatever monster that is. This began to be incuded around year 2000. More importantly, it is ALWAYS part of any SATA controller system, because SATA was released with that support from its beginnings. And of course, XP SP2 has 48-bit LBA support in it. So I doubt it is a BIOS problem.

So, what IS the trouble? I don't know. I thought XP SP2 has some limit on the max size of one volume (partition) even though it can handle huge drives, but my fuzzy memory says that is around 2 TB, not 1. Maybe I'm wrong there.

I've tried everything I can think of, the drive shows the full size in the Disk Manager, BIOS, etc, etc.

I even replaced it with a new one from the store I got it from and had the same issue.

I updated drivers, BIOS, everything I could think of with no luck.

However, I read that Vista is having a similar issue with the drive, I'm using XP though so I don't see why I would be having the issue, but clearly something is up.

Either way, I stopped short of booting into a *nix live CD and checking the drive with that mainly because I just moved and don't have access to a blank CD/DVD right now. Regardless, it's just causing me a headache and everyone I talks to can't come up with a reason as to why this is going on.

So I'm returning the drive and picking up a second 1 Terabyte drive.

Thanks for trying to help guys =3

Win XPx64 here. Just added the Seagate 1.5TB to my 2 - 500GB Samsungs, I am starting to approach full on #2 with a lot of ripped TV shows from my DVDs.
I also had XP showing .99TB after a long format.
Under Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management I right-clicked the drive in question (ST31500343AS) and deleted the original partition I set up with my XP disk, then set it up again and quick formatted and now it shows 1.36TB, which is closer to acceptable than .99TB.
Simple as that, I guess.

Thanks. I wasn't 100% sure, I know it's never exactly what the drive size is supposed to be. I'm just glad it was such an easy fix (for a change).

Hi,

I know its an old issue but if there are other users who faced the exact same problem, maybe this would help them. I had the same trouble with the same HDD. I am using a Gigabyte motherboard with nVidia chipset. I installed the latest driver of nVidia downloaded from nvidia.com. Then i could format the HDD.

PS: The ad at ebay was deleted so i could not see the solution in that page. If it was suggesting the same solution, sorry in advance.

aphilic

People having issues with this drive should download SeaTools for DOS, click I Accept, fill out the form, download the file, create either a bootable floppy or CD/DVD, restart the computer and boot from that floppy or disc. You may need to use a PS2 keyboard or mouse to navigate SeaTools. Press F10 to bypass the disclaimer. You'll have to select an option from one of the drop-down menus indicating Set To Max Native. You may get an error saying "check to be sure that the drive has been power cycled", but this can be ignored. Restart the computer and boot up as normal. Check under Disk Management and you should now see that the drive is at its capacity (approximately 1.36TB).

Just purchased a Seagate 1.5TB - ST31500341AS with firmware CC1H

I also cannot format this drive under Vista 64 bit to its full 1.5TB capacity.

I also cannot partition the drive to anything over around 800 Gigs and the remaining free space cannot be sub-partitioned.

When you do format to around 800 Gigs the drive seems ok.

I am using the drive in an Asus P5N32-E SLI motherboard with an nvidia based chipset.

Well I havent had much luck updating my nvidia SATA drivers for Vista 64-bit. Either i cant find the right driver or im reading lots of feedback which has caused more hassle than its worth so I decided against updating.

I did read an article which says to mount the drive in an external USB enclosure or ICY box mount and this appears to work.

There have been many problems with the 1.5 TB seagate drives and personally I have found that the issue is the drives themselves... did you try exchanging for another 1.5 TB? I have 8 of them on an Areca RAID card in a RAID 5 as a single 10.5 TB partition and have had to replace a total of 3 of the drives due to failure... but I read online in multiple forums that many experienced issues with this drive. I suggest choosing another model or exchange it. I finally have my RAID 5 working properly so hopefully no replacement anytime soon....

I have a similar yet slightly different problem, I think. My drive did format completely and you can see the full size, however, you cannot use anything over 1TB. The computer will just freeze if you try to add more to the drive. I haven't tried the seagate tool, but it looks like that will erase all of the data on the drive. I will try this if that's what it takes, but I would like to be sure that this will solve the problem before I go through the trouble. Does this look like the same issue?

SeaTools for DOS and setting capacity to the MAX didn't solve the problem.

I have had the same problem on a Dell XPS 600. I tried updating the nvidia drivers, but after several attempts, updating the drivers did not complete successfully and aborted. The fix I finally employed was to use a freeware version of Partition Master 3.5 by EASUS. I created a 500GB partition and formatted it, leaving the remainder unallocated. I then resized the disk using the same program and, so far, it works perfectly. Shows correctly in explorer and I have copied/read/executed files/programs on these partitions.

If you have Vista and an nVidia chipset, this Knowledge Base article on Seagate's web-site will explain the problem and provide the link to the newer driver that supports more than 1.1TB.
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/ [...] %7C+format

I had a problem formatting a Seagate 1.5 drive on a Dell XPS running Win xp pro x64. You could not format anything (quick or long) over 1TB using Win disk manager. Kept getting the "could not complete" error message.
Found a freeware partition program (Easeus Partition Manager Home Edition 4.0.1
on www.download.com) and tried that.

To my amasement, the little freeware program was able to fully format the drive in less than 3 min.

in order to read drives above 137 gb you need XP SP3

I added a second 1.5 TB HDD and I could not get it formatted in Vista - not even in Computer Management. THIS message below did the trick! Thank you very much!!

I had the same problem as a user above (vista would freeze on a 2TB drive at 54%). I tried the Seagate DOS utility but it would kick out when i selected my Hitachi 2TB drive.

I downloaded and installed Easeus Partition Manager Home Edition 4.1.1 from download.com. This program solved the problem for me. It took longer for the program to install then it took to format my 2TB drive!

Problem solved!

Solution Found :
I had purchased a Hitachi 2TB hard drive. It would only format about 900 GB and I thought I needed to RMA it. I downloaded Disk Utilities from Hitachi's website and ran a 7 hour advanced test on the drive to look for errors, I then did a complete "0" write over the hard drive that took another 6 hours to see if there were some bad sectors.
Even after the tests on the hard drive came back negative and the zero write was complete, windows would "successfully format" the drive. I kept getting hung up on anything larger than a tb when I partitioned the drive. Frustrated I used the vista install disk and kill disk and tried formatting from bootup software but this didn't work.

THE SOLUTION-
as other people have mentioned it turned out to be the Nvidia chipset on my Mobo. I thought it was recently updated as late as AUG 09 but apparently there was something missing.
I have an Nvidia 750a SLI chipset on a MSI motherboard so I was used to running the MSI Live Update for Bios and chipset updates. It was only when i went to Nvidia that the problem was fixed. As soon as I installed the chipset update and rebooted I was able to format the entire 2GB no problem.
I hope this info helps people