# Windows 7 and 4TB Hard Drive



## icmk (Jul 4, 2014)

I seem to be running into trouble with getting W7 to work with a WD Red 4TB, I would be grateful if someone can point out my errors.

After I connected and initialized the drive as a GPT disk, W7 reported it as a 1.67TB partition.  DISKPART, EASEUS/Paragon PMs all reported the same so I used GPARTED to format it as a 4TB NTFS drive.  Reboot back to W7 which now see all 4TB in a single partition, so I assumed that everything was fine.

Used ROBOCOPY to populate the drive overnight with about 2TB of data.  But the next day W7 reports the drive as not accessible.  Thought I must have received a bad drive so I ran an extended Data LifeGuard test.  But WinDLG reported NO error.

However W7 now report the drive as unformatted and want to format it.  So I ran the EASEUS/Paragon PMs and some parts of them see the 4TB, other parts see only 1.67TB.  DISKPART reports different sizes too.

This is the output from DISKPART:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          931 GB  0 B
  Disk 1    Online          931 GB  0 B
  Disk 2    Online         1678 GB  0 B            *
  Disk 3    Online          223 GB  0 B

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  -------
  Volume 0     R                       DVD-ROM        0 B   No Media
  Volume 1     G   Black        NTFS   Partition    931 GB  Healthy    Pagefil
  Volume 2     H   Blue         NTFS   Partition    931 GB  Healthy
  Volume 3     D                NTFS   Partition   3726 GB  Healthy
  Volume 4     C   Root         NTFS   Partition    223 GB  Healthy    System

DISKPART> select disk 2

Disk 2 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary           3726 GB  1024 KB


I've Googled the problem but most of them seem to involve initializing the drive as a MBR disk. I'd be truly thankful if someone can give me some help on this.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 4, 2014)

you need to install windows  7 fresh on the drive with no other drives attached


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## icmk (Jul 4, 2014)

Thanks for the quick reply.

I'm using the 4TB strictly as a data drive.  Actually I'm just attaching it to my desktop to copy backed up data onto it.  Its final destination will be a Hyper-V server.


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## Solaris17 (Jul 4, 2014)

the partition map is damaged because you keep using diffirent programs

clean the disk using disk part and then re format it and init as GPT


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## icmk (Jul 4, 2014)

Thanks for the reply, happy 4th to you.

DISKPART | clean | convert gpt gives me a 1.67TB disk.  Am I using the wrong commands/arguments?


DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status  Size  Free  Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0  Online  931 GB  0 B
  Disk 1  Online  931 GB  0 B
* Disk 2  Online  1678 GB  1678 GB
  Disk 3  Online  223 GB  0 B

DISKPART> convert gpt

DiskPart successfully converted the selected disk to GPT format.

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status  Size  Free  Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0  Online  931 GB  0 B
  Disk 1  Online  931 GB  0 B
* Disk 2  Online  1678 GB  1677 GB  *
  Disk 3  Online  223 GB  0 B


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## Solaris17 (Jul 4, 2014)

yes your converting clear it again and handle the rest in disk manager


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## icmk (Jul 4, 2014)

DISKPART | clean, DISKMGMT.MSC initialize as GPT disk.

Same result, 1.67TB disk.  8-(

Edit:  Just to add that it's W7 64bit and the system has dealt with a number of 3TB drives without problem before but it's the 1st 4TB and WD Red.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 4, 2014)

Killdisk to completely wipe it


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## icmk (Jul 4, 2014)

Found out what's causing the probem.

It's the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.  Once I've uninstalled it W7/DISLPART/etc see the whole 4TB.

Thanks everyone for their replies.


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## Solaris17 (Jul 4, 2014)

icmk said:


> Found out what's causing the probem.
> 
> It's the Intel Matrix Storage Manager.  Once I've uninstalled it W7/DISLPART/etc see the whole 4TB.
> 
> Thanks everyone for their replies.



Thanks for letting us know what it was.


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## eidairaman1 (Jul 5, 2014)

Might want to see if there is an update to it


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## Steevo (Jul 5, 2014)

I was just going to suggest the mobo or the disk driver chipset driver may not handle it correctly.


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## Scott-Geek (Nov 18, 2014)

I had the same problem.  No matter what I did I could not see beyond 1687 GB
* Disk 2 Online 1678 GB 1677 GB *

This will be a secondary drive for me too.
I tried all of the above to no avail.

When I was ready to give up, thinking my 6-year old system (Alienware X58 with Asus P6T Deluxe MB with Marvell Raid Controller) would not handle the drive, I went through WD pages about the drive, and saw Windows 7 support as long as you have the latest Intel drive:

*Do I need a special driver to install a WD Advanced Format Drive on an Intel chipset?*

If your operating system is either Windows 7 or Vista, we recommend the following for maximum performance in all situations:

For Intel chipset, use the latest Intel driver version 9.6 or later. Please visit Intel for the latest driver downloads at http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-031502.htm
This surprised me since I still see the WD Green 4TB drive appearing during bios boot disk list with 1687 GB.

Hope this helps other people looking for this solution.


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