Does my mobo support 3TB HDD?

[thegenerousjew]

Hi,

I'm hoping some of you chaps would he able to help me figure this out.

I have an Asus M2NPV VM mobo nForce 4 http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2/M2NPVVM/ Running W7 x64
I bought a WD 3TB HDD [without doing my research] Plugged in and converted to GPT and it only shows as 768GB

I’m trying to figure out if my mobo will allow me to run/recognize a full 3TB partition as a secondary drive. I have no interest in running it as a primary/boot drive.

Here are the things I’ve tried.
Tried to install Asus Drive Unlocker. It doesn’t even install as it doesn’t even recognize my mobo as an Asus mobo
Basic research suggests that I don’t need a UEFI mobo if I wish to run it as a secondary drive.
Additional info that may help.
My BIOS shows it as a 3TB drive.
Any suggestions on what else I can try?

TIA!

Ps. I’m only interested in it appearing as a single 3TB partition.

 

[denis280]

before converting.did it show up 3 TB.

 

[thegenerousjew]

Nope it didn't show up at any point as 3TB.

 

[C1]

It may be just a scaling problem with the OS with the routine either displaying or calculating the drive capacity (used to be similar a problem in older MS OSes - XP I think).

768 x 4 = 3072
1024 GB x 3 = 3072

There should be a patch for it.

What happens when you do "chkdsk" on it?

 

[thegenerousjew]

@c1 will check and get back to you.

The Asus knowledgebank has the following to say

"Due to the limitation of all the chipsets of Raid controllers, currently volume over 2TB will not
be recognized correctly."

I'm not using it as part of a RAID setup.
Also for clarity I do not have any RAID setup on that system. But someone explained as its a 16 bit controller and it cant see beyond 2TB, it's a limitation inside the controller. He went on to explain the reason they mention it like this is because at the time they wrote that FAQ there were no 2TB drives on the market so raid was the only way to get beyond 2TB

Is this factually correct?

 

[Bubbaleone]

Nope it didn't show up at any point as 3TB.

Since your mobo doesn't have a native UEFI BIOS it doesn't matter if you formatted the drive in GPT; it's actual capacity won't be recognized by a MBR based BIOS. The solution is to download and install Seagate's Disc Wizard software. The software is actually made by Acronis for Seagate, is a free version of Acronis Backup and Revovery 2012, and includes their excellent Bootable Media Builder. It's available only through Seagate.

This is from section 4.1.1 of the user guide, "Adding a new large drive (>2TB) as non-system":

Lets assume that you have purchased a new hard disc larger than 2 TB and plan to use it as a nonsystem disc, and an operating system installed on your computer does not support GPT discs like Windows XP.

1. Install a new hard drive in your computer.

2. Run Seagate DiscWizard and start Add New Disc wizard. Since your operating system does not support GPT partition style, MBR style will be applied and only 2 TB of all disc space will be available for use. To allocate the entire disc space, you need to restart Seagate DiscWizard on operation completion, and run Seagate Extended Capacity Manager, where you can create Extended Capacity Discs.

Note: if you move such a disc to another system, you need at least one Seagate product installed on that system to be able to use Extended Capacity Discs.

.