TR Forums

Hi,

I just bought 3.0 TB Western Digital Internal Hard Disk.

I put it in the PC & it was detected as 2.0 TB HDD in Disk Management.

It also asked me to initialize the disk either as MBR or GPT Partition.

I am using Dell T-7500 Workstation with Windows -7 ( 64 bit ) OS

Can you please help me with following questions :

(1) What should I do to get full 3.0 TB Space rather than 2.0 TB it shows now ?

(2) Should I initialize it first if I want to install Win-7 on it OR just Pop in the Win-7 DVD & start installing it & it will guide me thru the rest of the procedure & help me select MBR or GPT then ?

(3) What should I do if I just want to have Large 3.0 TB single partition ? Should I initialize it & which one, MBR or GPT ?

(4) What should I do in case I initialize it either as GPT or MBR & don't get full 3.0 TB Of Space ?


Thanks Much

dan99t wrote:

(1) What should I do to get full 3.0 TB Space rather than 2.0 TB it shows now ?

According to what I read, you need to remove the preconfigured partition and convert the disk to use GPT instead of MBR (default). This is Microsoft's way of doing it. Others reported gparted to work.

dan99t wrote:

(2) Should I initialize it first if I want to install Win-7 on it OR just Pop in the Win-7 DVD & start installing it & it will guide me thru the rest of the procedure & help me select MBR or GPT then ?

Don't think your system has UEFI, so forget booting from GPT disks. Use this only as data.

dan99t wrote:

(3) What should I do if I just want to have Large 3.0 TB single partition ? Should I initialize it & which one, MBR or GPT ?

MBR/GPT is the scheme in how the drive is partition and how the partition information is stored. Since the drive comes out of the factory as MBR (for compatibility), you need to remove the existing partition and convert to use the GPT way of partitioning. See above.

dan99t wrote:

(4) What should I do in case I initialize it either as GPT or MBR & don't get full 3.0 TB Of Space ?

Either live with it or dump it (sell, give away, etc.).

Flying Fox wrote:

dan99t wrote:

(2) Should I initialize it first if I want to install Win-7 on it OR just Pop in the Win-7 DVD & start installing it & it will guide me thru the rest of the procedure & help me select MBR or GPT then ?

Don't think your system has UEFI, so forget booting from GPT disks. Use this only as data.

Yup. Unless you upgrade to a system with an EFI BIOS (or Linux is a practical option for your usage scenario), booting from a GPT drive will be problematic.

It is theoretically possible to use the Linux bootloader (GRUB) to boot Windows 7 from a GPT drive on a non-EFI system by creating what is called a "hybrid MBR", but this is a pretty serious hack, and I've never tried it myself.

just brew it! wrote:

Flying Fox wrote:

dan99t wrote:

(2) Should I initialize it first if I want to install Win-7 on it OR just Pop in the Win-7 DVD & start installing it & it will guide me thru the rest of the procedure & help me select MBR or GPT then ?

Don't think your system has UEFI, so forget booting from GPT disks. Use this only as data.

Yup. Unless you upgrade to a system with an EFI BIOS (or Linux is a practical option for your usage scenario), booting from a GPT drive will be problematic.

It is theoretically possible to use the Linux bootloader (GRUB) to boot Windows 7 from a GPT drive on a non-EFI system by creating what is called a "hybrid MBR", but this is a pretty serious hack, and I've never tried it myself.

\

GPT just requires a boot loader with GPT support in order to boot from it.

Unfortunately, on the Microsoft side you have to rely on third-party loaders to make this work on a non-EFI system. That's why HDD guys bundle a basic SATA controller with their retail packaging on 3TiB HDDs and beyond.

Otherwise, you have format the first 2TiB of HDD into a MBR partition and throw the remainder on a separate, non-bootable GPT partition.

One more thing, you need to run some kind of 64-bit OS in order to get GPT support. (Okay, there's GPT support on some 32bit OS but they are server/datacenter class stuff)

i am also planning to get a 3tb hdd from wd would it work on my asus p5k mobo?

killadark wrote:

i am also planning to get a 3tb hdd from wd would it work on my asus p5k mobo?

That board doesn't have EFI, so you have to rely on third-party boot loaders in order to boot from a GPT partition.

Otherwise, it should work fine as a data drive as ICH9 has 48-bit LBA support.

Flying Fox wrote:

dan99t wrote:

(1) What should I do to get full 3.0 TB Space rather than 2.0 TB it shows now ?

According to what I read, you need to remove the preconfigured partition and convert the disk to use GPT instead of MBR (default). This is Microsoft's way of doing it. Others reported gparted to work.

dan99t wrote:

(2) Should I initialize it first if I want to install Win-7 on it OR just Pop in the Win-7 DVD & start installing it & it will guide me thru the rest of the procedure & help me select MBR or GPT then ?

Don't think your system has UEFI, so forget booting from GPT disks. Use this only as data.

dan99t wrote:

(3) What should I do if I just want to have Large 3.0 TB single partition ? Should I initialize it & which one, MBR or GPT ?

MBR/GPT is the scheme in how the drive is partition and how the partition information is stored. Since the drive comes out of the factory as MBR (for compatibility), you need to remove the existing partition and convert to use the GPT way of partitioning. See above.

dan99t wrote:

(4) What should I do in case I initialize it either as GPT or MBR & don't get full 3.0 TB Of Space ?

Either live with it or dump it (sell, give away, etc.).

OK, I am not a techi & hence I am lost.

It is already asking if I want to initialize it as MBR or GPT. So doesn't it mean that it is not already preconfugered as MBR ?

How do I know if I have EFI or IEFI ?

Forget installing any OS. What do I need to do to gain full 3.0 TB Hard disk space ? Would just choosing GPT when it asks to initialize give me full 3.0 TB ?

dan99t wrote:

It is already asking if I want to initialize it as MBR or GPT. So doesn't it mean that it is not already preconfugered as MBR ?

Yeah, that probably means the drive is completely blank (no existing partition table).

dan99t wrote:

How do I know if I have EFI or IEFI ?

I looked up the specs for the T-7500 and did not see any mention of EFI BIOS, so it is quite likely that you don't have it.

dan99t wrote:

Forget installing any OS. What do I need to do to gain full 3.0 TB Hard disk space ? Would just choosing GPT when it asks to initialize give me full 3.0 TB ?

It should. But you won't be able to boot from it easily, so don't do that unless you've made up your mind to use it as a data-only drive.

Krogoth wrote:

killadark wrote:

i am also planning to get a 3tb hdd from wd would it work on my asus p5k mobo?

That board doesn't have EFI, so you have to rely on third-party boot loaders in order to boot from a GPT partition.

Otherwise, it should work fine as a data drive as ICH9 has 48-bit LBA support.

i do plan on using it as a data drive
so i wouldn't need a new mobo or something right

As long as you are using Vista and above. I am assuming you are not using some oddball server OS as your main OS.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 4111922342

For Linux, I suppose support would have been added earlier than Vista, but I will leave it to other Linux people to confirm.

I would like to Thank all including following members who have taken time to help me in various ways.

Flying Fox
Krogoth
just brew it!
killadark

My problem is solved as follows :

I partitioned it as GPT. But my motherboard's LSI Raid controller wouldn't recognize it as more than 2 TB

So I connected that drive to SATA Port & it does show 3 TB ( 2.79 TB ) now.

Once again Thank You so much.

Now my other task is transferring 2 TB of Data to this new 3 TB HDD fast & automatically & not by Copy Paste options that I know of & I am going to start another thread on it & hope you guys probably have the answer.

Since I don't see the other thread yet...

If you don't want to copy/paste for some reason, Robocopy is probably what you want.