Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

I had been experiencing strange behavior from my PC for a couple of weeks, with certain programs running excruciatingly slowly, while others were seemingly normal. Then, my data drive died... What is the point of a self-monitoring hard drive if it doesn't inform the user that it is failing? Seems a bit pointless to me!

Anyway, that was a Seagate Barracuda 2TB, and I replaced it with a new WD Black 6TB disc. I was desperate to get my data restored from backup, so I slapped it in, formatted a 2TB partition using my normal partitioning software, and started the long slow restore process.

Once that seemed to be proceeding nicely, I went back in and attempted to create a new partition following this first 2TB one, but the partitioning program doesn't appear to see it. I also tried increasing the size of the first one, but it will not increase beyond 2TB. I also tried cloning my C drive (250GB) to the unallocated 350-some GB space, but it tells me that the target partition is not large enough...

I have used mainly Seagate drives for many years, so does anyone know if there is a quirk to accessing the full size of a WD drive? I seem to have paid 6TB prices for a 2TB disk, as it stands...

sarge69 Loc: Ft Myers, FL

I use a program called USAEUS Partition Master. Works flawlessly and love it.

Sarge69

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

What is the largest partition your Mother Board supports? A 6TB HDD is fairly new technology, i.e., how old is your computer?

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Take a look at this link and see if it helps - there are some 2TB limitations (due to max MBR size and max # of clusters) on partition size in NTFS:
http://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/askcore/2010/02/18/understanding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage/

Will Windows (disk management under system tools in control panel) allow you to create additional partitions in the unpartitioned space?

As an aside, there are downsides to very large HDs. Even though the cost/TB is low for large drives, you're often better off with more, smaller drives. Not only are they painful to back up (even if you're doing incrementals to the cloud, you still have to do the initial seeding, and the restore can take forever), but even as part of a RAID group, there are downsides. During a drive failure, while the system is in degraded mode, you're vulnerable to a second drive failure (in which case, you lose access to all or part of your data), but the storage system performance is typically reduced in half during a rebuild, and to rebuild a replaced 6TB drive can take weeks. This is precisely one reason for the increased popularity of dual redundancy in RAID groups as drives get huge. And in small RAID groups, dual redundancy not only slows performance, but uses even more of the available storage for redundancy, which is unusable space. You're often better off to be more selective as to what you store (and delete) rather than keep everything forever (although I succumb to the temptation also). If it were mine, I'd be very tempted to order another equivalent drive and set up a RAID 1 mirror for redundancy - it already sounds like you have a backup/DR strategy.

Headed out to an appointment, but will add more detail later.

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Me too - used it for many years with no problems. This time, though...

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Ok, had to do some searching to find the actual entry listed, but I don't see how this can be the issue. They list the 2TB limit as applied with drives using 512 Byte cluster sizes, while Partition Master defaults to using 4KB. According to the table they list, that would give a maximum size of 16TB, which is more than enough.

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

The computer is a couple of years old. It has no problem accessing the full size of a Seagate 5TB external disk, which I use for backups.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Got it. Wasn't sure what cluster size you were using (my system allows a selection of cluster size). Also answers my suggestion about mirroring. I have experienced issues with Window's partition manager declining to partition unused space depending on whether the disk was dynamic or basic. I've usually resorted to a 3rd party manager such as Partition Magic or Partition Wizard, but it's been awhile and those may be outdated. Perhaps others have a suggestion...

whitewolfowner

Sounds to me that your computer will not see past 2TB on a drive. Check that spec first.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Ouch! - I do see the problem with the link (not sure how that happened), but the question is, did you solve your problem? And if so, how?

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

It works fine with a Seagate 5TB external as one of my backup drives...

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

I got onto WD and registered with their support forum or whatever it is. I sent a message, but only just saw the reply, so I won't be trying it until tomorrow. The initial comment was:
You need to verify that the drive was initialized GUID or GPT instead of MBR in order to have the full capacity available.

Well, I didn't initialize it as anything, just ran Partition Master on it, same as I always have done with Seagate disks...
I will follow the link she sent me, and post if it reveals anything useful...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Makes sense. MBR organized partition tables are limited to 2TB (as you discovered), whereas using GUID (GPT = GUID Partition Table) organized partition tables don't have that limitation. It was mentioned as one of the two 2TB limitations of NTFS in the (broken) link I tried to forward to you initially. Here's the information that I tried, but failed to provide:

"The organization of the partition table in the MBR limits the maximum addressable storage space of a disk to 2 TiB (232 × 512 bytes). Approaches to slightly raise this limit assuming 33-bit arithmetics or 4096-byte sectors are not officially supported as they fatally break compatibility with existing boot loaders and most MBR-compliant operating systems and system tools, and can causes serious data corruption when used outside of narrowly controlled system environments. Therefore, the MBR-based partitioning scheme is in the process of being superseded by the GUID Partition Table scheme in new computers. A GPT can coexist with an MBR in order to provide some limited form of backward compatibility for older systems."

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Reading the links she provided, it looks like my only option is going to be to trash my data, and use Disk Management to format the drive - supposedly, this will allow me to specify MBR/GUID. If it doesn't, then I will have wasted a whole bunch of time to reload my data from backup again...

I am still confused as to how I can plug in a Seagate 5TB drive and just use it, no formatting required, while the WD drive just won't play with me. I have used Partition Master for many years, but that does not appear to give me the MBR/GUID choice. Certainly, it never asked me to choose! I am wondering if I will be able to use the program on the drive, once I have built a 6TB partition, to divide it up 'on the fly', the way I do with my regular disks. Maybe it won't even *see* the drive if it is GUID, who knows?

I had bought an HP computer, a couple of years ago. About 10 minutes into setting the system up - *long* before I had a chance to create 'rescue disks' - it crashed, and totaled its system partition on the way down. It had been loaded with windows 8, and I had a valid windows 7 Pro CD, so I figured what the heck, I'll just stick on 7 and carry on. I got part way into the install, and the system would not load from the CD because the hard drive was GUID. Never did get that sorted out... HP flatly refused to even *try* to help, and I spent quite a few hours with Microsoft support - the only time they have ever been helpful to me - but we could not figure out why it wouldn't load the OS from the CD. I ended up boxing it up and returning it - and I swore I would never again own an HP computer! Tech support being unable to find a solution is one thing, but refusing to even *try*, with one of their brand-new PCs, that is intolerable!

This has made me a bit nervous of the whole GUID business, however...

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Good luck with the reformat. I'm guessing that since the Seagate didn't require formatting, that it had already been partitioned and formatted (probably because it was an external drive which most people would expect to be "plug-and-play") while your new drive was not. I'm sure there are a large percentage of PC users who have never partitioned or formatted a drive, much less delved into the subtleties of MBR vs GUID 😀