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Formating 3TB HD in GUID -- Drive won't display if moved.

J

jollywolf

Member
I read that you shouldn't format a drive over 2TB in MBR because Windows 7 (which I'm using) will not show the full space of the drive. So, I installed 2 new 3TB hard drives in an external enclosure and connected it through USB 3. I had no problems formatting the drive in GUID and was ready for use in minutes.

After testing the copy speed from an internal SATA connected drive to the new enclosure cased hard drive and getting about 40mb/sec transfer speed, I decided to move the new HD from the enclosure into an internal sata slot and test the speed difference. After installing and booting, I checked BiOS to see if the drive shows -- and it does. Then, I get to Windows and notice the drive isn't there anymore. It's listed as unallocated in disk management and requesting format for use.

Can someone explain to me why this is happening? My biggest concern is in the future if I move the HD from the enclosure to a new slot, it won't be recognized and I'll be forced to format to use the drive.

Is this simply because the format is done in GUID instead of MBR? And, what's the work around to get Windows to recognize the existing partition and data if that's the case?
 
It's not that you shouldn't, it's that you can't. A legacy MBR can't address >2TB so you lose anything above that mark.

I would say something happened during the move of the drive. Obviously, the partition table shouldn't have been invalidated or removed by simply moving the drive. Did you eject the drive properly before moving it? Can you try booting a Linux Live CD to see if it detects the partition table?
 
Hi Nothinman, thanks for replying.

Ejecting the drive... I turned off the computer and turned off the enclosure, then disconnected the drive. Pretty standard to how I handle any other drive move, and have never had this issue.

The unrecognized or "lost" partition result not only happened when I moved the drive from the enclosure to the internal sata slot, but also after I formatted and partitioned the drive again, and moved it BACK to the enclosure.

If I'm not ejecting the drive properly, I'm not aware of the proper protocol that could be causing this issue. If you think I'm doing something wrong here, I'll wait to hear from you. Then, I'll try Linux Live which I've never used before.

EDIT: I went ahead and started reading about Linux Live, but this is pretty new to me. I see a lot of options for different Live CDs, and I'm not sure which one you'd recommend for what I need. I did find this list -> http://www.livecdlist.com

Can you offer some guidance?
 
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Update:

I ran diskpart from command prompt, and used command 'list disk' to see if the drive would appear in DiskPart. It is listed as online, even though it doesnt appear in Windows Explorer.

In Disk Management, it's still listed as unallocated.
 
Its got nothing to do with GUID vs MBR.
Also GUID vs MBR has nothing to do with windows 7. Its all OS, windows, linux, mac... and every version not just 7. MBR on a 32bit controller on a 512 sector size drive is limited to 2TB partitions. 16TB on a 4kn (natively 4k sector) drive but all 4k drives are 512e (emulate 512 sectors) so in practice, no more then 2TB on MBR.

Your issue is obviously the controller on your external enclosure adding a layer between the drive and the OS. You said drives, plural, so that layer must be a RAID array.
Most likely it places them in RAID of some sorts and when moved the array breaks.
In order to be able to move raid drives they should be placed in RAID1 (and test that cause theoretically a bad controller can still mess that up)

If you put the drives back into the external controller they should identify the RAID array and resume operation (unless its a dumb controller and you reversed their order). If

Personally I would not trust a cheap dumb controller box with doing my RAID for me and would switch them to JBOD mode, and connect via eSATA. then you can set up your own RAID if you really need it.
 
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taltamir. Hi, thanks for your reply.

Your absolutely right. It's a dual-bay enclosure capable of RAID-0 and RAID-1. I wouldn't say it's a super cheap controller, but maybe you'll opinion will differ. This is the unit I purchased >> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817256078.

But, the current settings for the unit are in JBOD. I didn't set-up any kind of raid array. I had thought about it, but wanted to test the drives out first and had thought about using a software raid instead because I thought it might be easier to manage.

So you think even in JBOD this enclosure is setting up some kind of wall that is causing this problem?

If this is true, what does this mean for the future of my drives? Say the enclosure dies on me and I have to move the drives to another location... Am I going to lose everything??
 
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jollywolf said:
taltamir. Hi, thanks for your reply.

Your absolutely right. It's a dual-bay enclosure capable of RAID-0 and RAID-1. I wouldn't say it's a super cheap controller, but maybe you'll opinion will differ. This is the unit I purchased >> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817256078.
Click to expand...
The whole enclosure is 76$. but how much of that is the raid controller?
High Quality controllers start 300$ for the controller alone.

So you think even in JBOD this enclosure is setting up some kind of wall that is causing this problem?
Click to expand...

That is my guess, yes.

But, the current settings for the unit are in JBOD. I didn't set-up any kind of raid array. I had thought about it, but wanted to test the drives out first and had thought about using a software raid instead because I thought it might be easier to manage.
Click to expand...

Try putting just one drive in the external box, and then format it as GUID, then try taking out that one drive and connecting it to the computer directly.

If this is true, what does this mean for the future of my drives? Say the enclosure dies on me and I have to move the drives to another location... Am I going to lose everything??
Click to expand...
If it is true and the enclosure dies on you that you will need to buy an exact same make and model and hope it can recover that data or it is all gone.

A big reason I do NOT ever use external raid enclosures.
 
After that scary reply, I was left with no choice but to contact SilverStone and get to the bottom of this. Turns out the unit does not support this enclosure and 3TB drives, as it was meant for 2TB and lower. Disappointing considering that isn't what the description says.

Nonetheless, I thought I should clear the air about what actually happened with this unit.
 
jollywolf said:
After that scary reply, I was left with no choice but to contact SilverStone and get to the bottom of this. Turns out the unit does not support this enclosure and 3TB drives, as it was meant for 2TB and lower. Disappointing considering that isn't what the description says.

Nonetheless, I thought I should clear the air about what actually happened with this unit.
Click to expand...

thanks for clarifying. Quite unusual deficiency for their unit to not support such drives.
From your earlier posts I thought you were saying that you have successfully formatted it as a single 3 TB partition on GUID on the external enclosure and tested it to work on it.
 
Hi,

I am experiencing a similar problem in a single bay Atikio Cloud Hybrid external enclosure. I partitioned a 3TB HD with GUID in an external enclosure and placed data on it. I moved this 3TB HD into another external enclosure, desktop and neither could recongnise the partition. Windows 7 shows the disk as unallocated.


Please assist.
 
Wow USB 3.0 should get 125mbps . Your getting 35mbps which is USB 2.0 speeds.
The enclosure is probably usb 2.0 and not usb 3.0 or you didnt plug it into a usb 3.0 hole.

Of course your internal drive or the 3TB drive which you should not have gotten. My dad got a 2TB WDC My Book and baam it works fine. You can get 2 2TBs or whatever their soo cheap now .. RMA the drive or break it into partitions ... you probably get 100mbps if its sata 2.0 hard drive, if its sata 3.0 hard drive you will get 130mbps avg. Do these enclosures even have a on off switch... dont wanna leave on externals for too long as that is usually your source of backup.. thx gl
 
I have a WD 3.0TB drive I formatted using a Rosewill external (single) SATA to USB3.0 adapter which does not house the drive (just plugs into the bare drive). I copied 2TB of data onto no issue. I could read the data no issue. Then I unmounted it, powered down, installed it into a computer. It will not show up as a mounted drive in Win7, but it does say it installed a driver for it. It does show up in the control panel "create and format hard partition", but it ask to partition the unallocated drive. I did not allow Win7 to do this. Then I put it back on the Rosewill external adapter and all the data is there, no issue. Since I've tried mounting it on several other computer and another Rosewill USB3.0 external enclosure, and still no luck. The drive has the data, I can access it, but only using this one adapter: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812119279 😕

Willie
 
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