I partitioned a 3 terabyte drive to use internal on my computer. It worked fine. I now want to restore it back to its default . I've saved all needed files and put it back into usb box and connected usb to computer. When I start format wizard it only shows 7?? Gig available to format. How can I restore to 3 terabytes?
The quick way is to format each partition on the 3tb drive and then extend the original/main partition to reallocate the partitioned drives back to it. Depending on what drive letters assigned to it are....normally the main drive is called C then each partition follows suite with E, F, G and so on. Then just format E,F,G and then readd them to C. And that's it.
Info update. Under USB connection hd shows 744 gig. I reinstalled hd and used diskpart. Diskpart only showed 1 of the 2 partitions. ( P1 + P2 = 3 terabyte)
I created and formated partition a little over 2 tb. Uninstalled from computer and replaced in USB box and connected to computer. Computer only sees second unformated partition, the one not listed in diskpart. When I format this partion while connected via USB it breaks the drive into 6 formated and unformated partitions. The previous decription also happens when computer manager is used.
I suspect this is caused by the bios limitation of 2 tb.
Is there a good sw that could overcome this limitation? I'm using win7 home premium.
Depending on make and model of your mobo...you should be able to download the AHCI driver and install it and then enable it in the BIOS. This will allow you to use the larger drives. Now the bad part. If it's not enabled, and you enable in the BIOS and restart this will cause a BSOD. The only way to overcome this is to reinstall the OS once the driver is enabled. The AHCI driver has to be installed and enabled before the OS is installed. Why, I don't know...it's just how it is.
Thanks for your help guys.
My MB/BIOS is to old and does not have AHCI.
I understand that there is a software (outside of windows, DOS?) which will allow me to override any HD settings that may be preventing me from deleting the second, unformatted partition and allow me to format the full 3 terabytes. Any ideas?
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