TR Forums

Hi,

I ordered a WD Green ( 5400 RPM ) 3.0 TB HDD online.

Instead I received WD Black ( 7200 RPM ) 3.0 TB HDD which is good because it is twice the price except 2 things.

It is Recertified & thus not brand New.

Also whoever owned it didn't know that it should be initiated as a GPT & not MBR. So it is formatted as a MBR with 4 partitions & 3 of them total only to 2.0 TB & 4th is useless. 4th Partition can not be created as a volume OR be deleted.
Here are the Partitions as shown in Disk Management :

48.83 GB Unallocated ( Right clicking gives an option to create new volume )
697.68 GB Free Space ( Right clicking gives an option to create new volume OR Delete Partition )
1301.5 GB Unallocated ( Right clicking gives an option to create new volume )
746.52 GB Unallocated ( Right clicking this does not give any options such as delete partition or Create new volume

The obvious answer is to return it which is going to be a hassle now.

OR

Can I still initiate it as GPT to avail full 3.0 TB Capacity & if yes, how do I do that ?

Thank You.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Change+a+Master+Bo ... Table+Disk

Have you tried deleting all the partitions using diskpart's "clean" option? Be certain that you've selected the correct drive before you do this.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

JustAnEngineer wrote:

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Change+a+Master+Boot+Record+Disk+into+a+GUID+Partition+Table+Disk

Have you tried deleting all the partitions using diskpart's "clean" option? Be certain that you've selected the correct drive before you do this.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

First link is funny as well as very useful. How do I do that for someone else needing help ?

No, I have not done anything with any partitions I described for fear of screwing things up.

I found a little video that uses AOMEI Partition software that does the job without losing any data but there is no data in the disk so I guess deleting partition wouldn't hurt, right ?

I can delete partition 2 in disk mgmt. with right click. But then I still have to clean it using diskpart, right ?

dan99t wrote:

I can delete partition 2 in disk mgmt. with right click. But then I still have to clean it using diskpart, right ?

Diskmgmt is basically the same, you can think of it as the GUI version of diskpart. Delete all the partitions, get back to a gigantic "Unallocated" block, and then do the following:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/libr ... 25671.aspx