[MRD6]

Hello, please read in its entirety. If not you will think you know the answer but I guarantee you would be wrong.

I have a Alienware Aurora computer purchased from Dell 2 1/2 years ago. It came with a 3TB hard drive, I right away went and bought a 4TB hard drive separately as my D drive.
After all this time, issues crop up that affect windows which means it is time to partition the C drive and reformat and install windows 7.
So I bought a Sandisk 240GB SSD and a 4TB WD Green hard drive. My goal is to make the SSD my C Drive.
Did research and found that I had to unplug all hard drives and convert SSD to GPT. Done and done. Installed windows, everything is great so far.
I then plugged in my old C drive (still windows my old windows on it.) and my D drive and my new 4TB hard drive.
Now things get interesting. Went into disk management and it only recognizes my new 4TB ***unallocated*** HD as 2TB.
Hmm, so I rebooted with my old C drive. It recognized it as 4TB.
Umm, ok, so I partitioned and formatted. Rebooted with my SSD and it now saw it as 4TB. Then things go terribly wrong. I put videos on my new 4TB. I then turned my computer off to sleep. The next day after booting up off SSD, the new 4TB is unallocated again. And any new or old videos that I have are now destroyed (on all hard drives) not including SSD.
I rebooted in my old C drive and my wallpaper was garbled, many program no longer worked. Holy Crap!!!
No choice but to format my old C drive and reinstall windows on it which I did via the windows 7 disk. But after deleting the partition, it now only recognized it as a 769 GB and there is nothing I can do to change that.
I know all about UEFI and booted that way from the bios. No luck, can't extend partitions either. Did research on the net and no one had this problem.
Any ideas?

 

[SpywareDr]

Blogs.TechNet.Microsoft.com > Understanding the 2 TB Limit in Windows Storage

 

[spunk.funk]

Any drive that is over 2.2TB must be initialized GPT not as MBR. If you initialized a drive MBR the capacity will be diminished. (eg) 769GB.
Remove all drives and boot off of the SSD. If this is all good then shut down the comptuer and attach the 4TB drive as a secondary and then Initialize the drive in DiskPart:
Go to Start/Search and type CMD, Right click the CMD results and Run As Administrator.
In the Elevated command prompt type following commands pressing Enter after each bold command:
i) diskpart
ii) list disk
it will show the list of your drives,
iii) select disk <disk number>
disk number = as listed in previous commandiv)
iv) clean (this erases all data on the Disk, so be sure you choose the correct one)
v) convert gpt
vi) create partition primary
vii) format fs=ntfs quick
now for verification of disk status and free space type
v) list disk
the status should be "online" and free space should be "disk size"
If Disk Size is not correct, the drive has become corrupted and needs to be replaced.

‘vi)exit

 

[MRD6]

Thanks for the reply, but everything you suggested is impossible. I have done the convert gpt via windows 7 disk and through windows 7 booted by SSD. The SSD (yes it's UEFI) can't see my 3TB or 4TB correctly. Yet with my original C drive (now formatted) did see it correctly.

So from the windows 7 disk, I can't see it correctly no matter what, even after using Diskpart. I think Dell at the time installed my hard drive preformatted and sold me a defective PC. No other explanation.

 

[Wizmo]

With the PC at 2.5 years old, there may be a BIOS update that can help solve your issues. Often a drive mismatch issue comes down to the system BIOS configuration being outdated. Something to consider.

 

[spunk.funk]

Also make sure in the Bios that the HDD mode is set to AHCI and not IDE or legacy. If you have Secure Boot Enabled, disable it or change it to Setup Mode.
If UEFI bios isn't working then change it to Legacy and see what happens.

 

[MRD6]

In my BIOS it has two menus, UEFI and Legacy. I booted off the CD/DVD drive from the UEFI menu into my windows 7 disk. No luck when using Diskpart, I also tried booting from the CD/DVD under the Legacy menu, same difference. I have called dell and they didn't even know what UEFI was. They don't have tech support.
But like I said before, the only time I was able to see the drives at the correct size was my old original C drive that Dell preloaded for me. Windows 7 disk is useless.
I did the Diskpart, select disk 0, clean, convert GPT. Still shows as 769GB.

 

[spunk.funk]

If Disk Size is not correct, the drive has become corrupted and needs to be replaced.

To boot off of a CD or USB flash, you must boot into Setup (Bios) disable Secure Boot or change it to Setup Mode. Then go to the Boot tab and change UEFI Bios to Legacy and Move CD/DVD rom drive to First Boot Device, Save and Exit.
Other then that try the drive on a different computer without UEFI Bios and try DiskPart.
If you continue to have problems with the WD drive, contact their support. Warranty Status | WD Support
Dell does indeed have phone tech support: http://www.dell.com/support/incidents-online/us/en/19/contactus/Dynamic

 

[Stancestans]

Any drive that is over 2.2TB must be initialized GPT not as MBR. If you initialized a drive MBR the capacity will be diminished. (eg) 769GB.
Remove all drives and boot off of the SSD. If this is all good then shut down the comptuer and attach the 4TB drive as a secondary and then Initialize the drive in DiskPart:
Go to Start/Search and type CMD, Right click the CMD results and Run As Administrator.
In the Elevated command prompt type following commands pressing Enter after each bold command:
i) diskpart
ii) list disk
it will show the list of your drives,
iii) select disk <disk number>
disk number = as listed in previous commandiv)
iv) clean (this erases all data on the Disk, so be sure you choose the correct one)
v) convert gpt
vi) create partition primary
vii) format fs=ntfs quick
now for verification of disk status and free space type
v) list disk
the status should be "online" and free space should be "disk size"
If Disk Size is not correct, the drive has become corrupted and needs to be replaced.

‘vi)exit

Thanks for the reply, but everything you suggested is impossible. I have done the convert gpt via windows 7 disk and through windows 7 booted by SSD. The SSD (yes it's UEFI) can't see my 3TB or 4TB correctly. Yet with my original C drive (now formatted) did see it correctly.

So from the windows 7 disk, I can't see it correctly no matter what, even after using Diskpart. I think Dell at the time installed my hard drive preformatted and sold me a defective PC. No other explanation.

How are spunk.funk's instructions impossible? They are pretty clear and precise to me. If you encountered an error then it'd be more informative if you replied with that particular error or a screenshot. It doesn't matter whether you are booting in UEFI or Legacy mode or whether you're booting from the SSD or Windows Seven disc. What matters is the partition table style of the drive. Converting it to GPT will overcome partition size limitations as long as the disk is not defective. If your PC had been defective out-of-box as you claim, don't you think your first 4TB disk "D" wouldn't have worked ALL that time?

In my BIOS it has two menus, UEFI and Legacy. I booted off the CD/DVD drive from the UEFI menu into my windows 7 disk. No luck when using Diskpart, I also tried booting from the CD/DVD under the Legacy menu, same difference. I have called dell and they didn't even know what UEFI was. They don't have tech support.
But like I said before, the only time I was able to see the drives at the correct size was my old original C drive that Dell preloaded for me. Windows 7 disk is useless.
I did the Diskpart, select disk 0, clean, convert GPT. Still shows as 769GB.

I find it hard to believe that Dell techs didn't know what UEFI is. Dell sure has tech support, as has already been said, so I wonder who you called. The Windows Seven disc and operating system is useless if you do not know how to use it's functions. If you ran DiskPart with only the SSD and new 4TB drives attached as spunk.funk instructed, disk 0 would be the SSD and not the 4TB HDD. Since you were running DiskPart from an online (loaded) installation of Windows Seven, DiskPart didn't touch the SSD because it was the system and boot disk, neither did it touch the HDD because it's not Disk 0.

Repeat spunk.funk's instructions KEENLY and if you encounter an error then post a screenshot of it. Detach ALL other storage devices and attach ONLY the SSD to SATA port 0 (the very first SATA port) then boot from it and NOT the Windows Seven DVD. If Windows boots fine, shutdown and attach the new 4TB drive to SATA port 1 (second port). Check in BIOS and confirm that the SSD still has the highest HDD boot priority, which is usually a separate setting from the boot order setting, but still under boot section of the BIOS. Boot from the SSD and use diskpart as per spunk's instructions. Report back with the results.