2TB hard drive & Win 7( 32 Bt(

[deerwrangler]

I just bought a WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive". I was able to partition it in an already up and running PC so i know that the drive is recognised by the operating system.
I then deleated the partitions, removed the drive from that computer and connected it to a pc i am just now building. Issue comes up that although the BIOS shows the 2 tb drive when i try to install Windows 7(32 Bit) on it itcomes up with an error "MBR not found" Knowing that the physical size of the drive is something LESS that the actual 2 TB size i am wondering if the drive is physically bad or IF by chance that the physical size (1.80-1.98TB) is of the size that will prevent Win7 (32bit) from being able to install on it.

More of a question than an issue

 

[electrontau]

During the process of windows installation, did you let the setup process delete all the partitions and format the drive? Was the error message showing after setup reboot?

Typically I would not recommend installing OS in such a big drive. Create a small partition, 100gb, for OS and apps. The large partition for you personal data.That way if OS fails and need to reinstall OS, your personal data is safe. Better if you have another physical drive just for OS and apps, and use the 2tb for data.

 

[deerwrangler]

I always partition the drive so that the operating system is on a small partion, as compared to the other partitions. That doesnt seem to be the problem.
I have hear or read somewhere about large drives being an issue for NON 62 bit operating systems and since i was trying to install Win 7 ( 32 bit op system NOT the 64 Bit version)I was wondering if that was going to be an issue or not.

Whether i let the install process delete all partitions and then let it repartition it the install never gets that far and it reboots.

 

[electrontau]

I also remember reading somewhere that 32bit OS have hard time booting from 2TB drive. It happens to 32-bit Xp but also win7. Need to search for it.

The way around it is to partition the drive.

 

[popatim]

Aren't the WD ears drives the 'Advaqnced Format' drives and so they would need a compatible OS of which 7 is, so did you align the drive with the WD software? You can't use the jumper since you have multiple partitions on it.

 

[deerwrangler]

For all that i know the motherboard has gone south. So as a " When all else fails" just connect it to a known working computer and see what it does....
At least that way i'll be able to clean out some dust bunnies that are sure to have been taking up residence in that PC/

 

[popatim]

I dont know what I was thinking. Win7 should support the drive. You may need to delete the partitions and recreate them if they were created under another OS. You may even need to recover the deleted partitions and then delete them under Win7 so you can recreate them.

 

[deerwrangler]

Best answer selected by DeerWrangler.

 

[deerwrangler]

What the problem ended up being is that the MB had an older bios that did not support the new cpu. Although system booted and i could start the install of Win 7 once it came time to first boot the mismatch between Bios and CPU caused system to go thru a loop. And since it was / or had been installing Win7 it tried to go thru that process again and again.