Please help: installed 4tb HD's and only seeing ~1.67tb each

[jimbob200521]

Long story short, I upgraded my server from two aging and troubled HD's to two brand new 4tb HGST drives that I planned to put into RAID1. Got the drives, installed them in my main PC first for formatting and testing and things went well. Drives showed up, had correct space, formatted correctly, etc. So having these two drives prepped and ready for action, I shut down my server and swapped the drives over. Booted back up and now they are showing as only having 1677.89gb on each drive. It shows this amount in the RAID setup menu prior to booting into Windows as well as within Windows (doesn't matter whether I create an array or leave the drives independant).

My server specs are in my sig but if you can't see them it's got an Asrock X58 Supercomputer motherboard with an i7 960EE running Windows 7 x64. The drives are setup as GPT but won't let me see the full size of the drive within Disk Management. However, if I launch the HGST WinDFT utility it reports the correct 4tb size.

So what am I missing here guys? I'm not trying to boot from these drives, only access them within Windows for storage. Please help!

 

[UsandThem]

Try these two things, as there seems to be a common trend on people looking for help on larger drives only reporting back as 1677 GB.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2487014/4tb-showing-windows-1677-90gb.html

I had a similar problem when I had to install my a 3TB boot drive for a friend.
1. I know you checked buy are you super sure you installed the UEFI version of windows. I didn't know that there was a separate install option at first. The link below shows how to check.
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/29504-bios-mode-see-if-windows-boot-uefi-legacy-mode.html

2. Make sure you install the f6 intel RAID driver during install. You can keep it on a serperate drive or USB stick. It doesn't need to be on a floppy.

That solved it for me.

 

[jimbob200521]

Well, small update of sorts. After fiddling with some drivers I got my system updated to the latest version of drivers available for my onboard RAID controller from within Windows. Windows now sees both 4tb drives just fine, however; when I try to create a RAID array by going into the controllers config by pressing CTRL+I, the "bios" still recognizes them as sub 2tb drives. What the hell do I do from here?!

 

[jimbob200521]

Try these two things, as there seems to be a common trend on people looking for help on larger drives only reporting back as 1677 GB.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2487014/4tb-showing-windows-1677-90gb.html

Thank you for the suggestion, but I've been down that road. My server in question does not have a UEFI BIOS. However, I also found that this only really matters if you want to boot from the larger than 2tb drive, which I do not. I just want to set them in a RAID1 and use it for storage but the RAID controller doesn't see the full drive sizes prior to windows :-/

 

[UsandThem]

Thank you for the suggestion, but I've been down that road. My server in question does not have a UEFI BIOS. However, I also found that this only really matters if you want to boot from the larger than 2tb drive, which I do not. I just want to set them in a RAID1 and use it for storage but the RAID controller doesn't see the full drive sizes prior to windows :-/

Have you tried Asrock's 3TB+ unlock utility then?

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X58 SuperComputer/?cat=Download&os=Win764

 

[jimbob200521]

Have you tried Asrock's 3TB+ unlock utility then?

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X58 SuperComputer/?cat=Download&os=Win764

Yessir, although that was an effort in futility. Turns out, although not documented well, that 3tb+ unlocker utility is for the 32 bit versions of Windows. Why Asrock has it listed under the x64 download pages on various motherboards is beyond me. But yessir, I do currently have it installed.

 

[UsandThem]

I've never tried setting up RAID on a non-UEFI motherboard with large drives, but that unlock utility doesn't work (which from the sound of this thread it probably won't).

https://hardforum.com/threads/4tb-boot-drive-in-raid-0-without-uefi.1713411/

Unless you are running a 64 bit varient AND have a UEFI based system, you have a 2.19TB boot volume limit (however you decide to achieve that. 1 2TB disk, 2 1TB in R0, etc). If you want a larger boot volume, you need a new Motherboard that supports UEFI and a 64 bit Win7 OS. Your board DOES NOT support UEFI.

 

[jimbob200521]

I've never tried setting up RAID on a non-UEFI motherboard with large drives, but that unlock utility doesn't work (which from the sound of this thread it probably won't).

https://hardforum.com/threads/4tb-boot-drive-in-raid-0-without-uefi.1713411/

I'm starting to come to the same conclusion, although why Windows recognizes the full size but the RAID BIOS doesn't is beyond me. I'm starting to look into letting Windows Disk Management create and manage the RAID1 array, although that's not my first choice...

 

[UsandThem]

From reading through help posts, it seems the boot size limitation is due to not having UEFI on the motherboard, but once in Windows 7 64x and above, there is no issue once handed off to SATA controllers.

Like I mentioned before, this is just what I came away with from reading articles. I bet VirtualLarry has run into this before, as he is always tinkering with older hardware. Maybe shoot him a PM.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that both your RAID option ROM, as well as your original RAID controller Windows drivers had a 2TB limitation.

Then, you updated your Windows drivers, but not the RAID BIOS option ROM.

At this point, if a newer BIOS flash with an updated option ROM for the RAID controller is not available, then either look into third-party modded BIOSes (carries some risk), or using an add-in RAID card with it's own RAID option ROM BIOS onboard (and disable the mobo's RAID).

Edit: Another possibility, if this is just for data storage and doesn't need to be bootable, would be to get a USB3.0 external RAID-capable drive chassis, and throw the drives in there, as a mirror. Be careful to suss out the drive-size limitations on those chassis too.

Edit: Or just get a small two-bay NAS, like a QNAP TS-231 for $100-150.

 

[jimbob200521]

I think that both your RAID option ROM, as well as your original RAID controller Windows drivers had a 2TB limitation.

Then, you updated your Windows drivers, but not the RAID BIOS option ROM.

At this point, if a newer BIOS flash with an updated option ROM for the RAID controller is not available, then either look into third-party modded BIOSes (carries some risk), or using an add-in RAID card with it's own RAID option ROM BIOS onboard (and disable the mobo's RAID).

Edit: Another possibility, if this is just for data storage and doesn't need to be bootable, would be to get a USB3.0 external RAID-capable drive chassis, and throw the drives in there, as a mirror. Be careful to suss out the drive-size limitations on those chassis too.

Edit: Or just get a small two-bay NAS, like a QNAP TS-231 for $100-150.

I think you and I are on the same page...Once drivers within Windows were updated (driver put out by Intel, not Asrock, updated less than a couple weeks ago), it allowed Windows to see the full drives. However, as you stated, the RAID BIOS did not get updated. I checked Asrock and didn't see an updated BIOS (I'm already running the latest BIOS). So, I settled on letting Windows do my RAID1. Not my preferred option but after doing a little reading I was sold that I can take the array out of this PC and drop it into another Windows PC and it will just pick up where I left off. This is a fine option for me as the drives are just for bulk storage (media library, streaming, etc). The thought crossed my head to put together a new PC (who doesn't love any ol' excuse to build a new PC) but that would not be a wise investment, building a whole new PC just so I can do my RAID1 in a different way.

Anywho, I'm up and going now. I'm transferring my library from my old drives to the new ones as I type this so I think this will work. I'm not sure about the modded BIOS for the raid controller but if I came across one, I'd look into it. For now, off to copy 3+tb of stuff over gigabit and eat some chicken nuggets.

 

[Burpo]

Never going to work with chicken nuggets.. You have to eat grilled steak soft taco's for it to work

 

[jimbob200521]

Never going to work with chicken nuggets.. You have to eat grilled steak soft taco's for it to work

Called off work today and I've been cooped up in the house all day trying to find food that sounds good. And you sir, are about 8 hours too late on that because steak tacos sound good!