[HELP!] Format a 3TB External HDD to FAT32

Ok, now we're cooking with gas!!! I was able to format 1.99TB to NTFS and the drive is now showing as G. New problem, the remaining 746.52GB (refer to post #25 for picture or one below) "unallocated volume" can't be formatted to NTSF, or be seen by Windows to use. [IMG][/IMG]

I have to be honest, I read the linked thread about gparted and it made my head spin. I don't understand any of it. Is there a simple way to get my other TB back or should I just cut my losses and use this as a 2TB drive?? I'm looking for honest opinions from people who know about things like this. As you can probably tell by now I don't really know what I'm doing Now, if this was an Android phone, I'd have root access and be flying through everything in minutes. Maybe one day I'll be as comfortable with Windows, maybe, lol.

I kind of feel like a winner now that I got this drive ALMOST back to 100%. I'm not even upset about not being able to format it to FAT32 and use on my PS3. I thought it was dead and I'd lost all my money so I'm playing with house money now, so to speak.

P.S. Sorry for the rambling

Didn't the drive come out of the box blank, unpartitioned and unformatted? If so just delete all the partitions and don't worry about partitioning it or formating it. If a partition is unformatted it won't have a drive letter and won't show up under My Computer. If a drive has no partitions or no formated partitions it won't show up in My Computer or explorer. Thats normal. Disk Management will still show you the physical size of the drive even if it isn't partitioned. If you look under Disk # on the left you will see the size listed. If it was an internal drive the BIOS would list the physical size too, even if its unpartitioned. Let the next guy worry about partitioning it and formating it.

No the drive was formatted to NTSF and showed all 3TB (well, not all 3TB, but close enough) right out of the box.

I'm confused now, though, I see what you mean about disk size on the left and it does show the drive as being ~3TB. Why can't I get rid of that 746GB "volume" that isn't showing as usable?

In your opinion do you think I should just return it or sell it and just start fresh with a smaller drive?

gazz9496 said:

just curious but you are able to even format the whole 3tb in your installation of windows?

i ask because windows 7 has a limit of 2.2tb using a standard bios.

If your os was installed using efi i would say ok fine but the ps3 uses a 16bit bios anyway which is why it has a limit of 2.2tb as well.

efi, removes the bios limitation on drive sizes, 16bit bios is being phased out due to those limits at 2.2tb, the actual bios is a 64 bit program installed on your harddrive instead of flash memory on your mobo.

while windows 7 64 is a good os it has it's limits on drive size defined before it can even load up by the bios, the ps3 is no different in that regard those limitations are there and there is no way around them without changing the hardware to support larger drives.

I do believe this is why you can't use the whole 3TB

alphanumeric said:

gazz9496 said:

just curious but you are able to even format the whole 3tb in your installation of windows?

i ask because windows 7 has a limit of 2.2tb using a standard bios.

If your os was installed using efi i would say ok fine but the ps3 uses a 16bit bios anyway which is why it has a limit of 2.2tb as well.

efi, removes the bios limitation on drive sizes, 16bit bios is being phased out due to those limits at 2.2tb, the actual bios is a 64 bit program installed on your harddrive instead of flash memory on your mobo.

while windows 7 64 is a good os it has it's limits on drive size defined before it can even load up by the bios, the ps3 is no different in that regard those limitations are there and there is no way around them without changing the hardware to support larger drives.

I do believe this is why you can't use the whole 3TB

That doesn't make sense, though if the drive was showing as 3TB usable storage right out of the box before I started messing with it.

The BIOS limitation is likely preventing you from creating the single 3 TB partition. It was 3 TB out of the box because it was formated at the factory on another machine. I know in early days of computing, even if you formated a drive on a PC that supported its size, it wouldn't be usable on a PC that didn't. You would get errors or it would show up as being smaller than it really was. I don't have a drive that size to play with myself so I'm just giving suggestions based on what other people have posted in this thread.

Ohh, ok, I finally get it Well, looks like I learned a lesson the hard way then. I should have never started messing with this if I couldn't get it all the way back to 100% stock. I figured it was just my lack of knowledge that was preventing me from doing it. I guess my last option is hoping that Seagate responds to my email and has software, or knowledge of, to reformat it back

Thanks again to everyone who has taken the time to reply to this thread and help me. I really appreciate it

ok...i figured out how to fully Format a 3 TB seagate Goflex external hard drive to Multiple (3) fat 32 and also discovered how to break it up to NTFS and FAT 32....here is what i did

my OS is windows 7 ultimate 64 bit

here is a step by step

start menu
right click my computer...select manage
select disc management
find the drive in the list
delete all allocations till you have 2 parts...the remaining partition will not be able to be allocated the magic number is 746.52 GB that unallacatable..

i used a tool called Acronis true disc image home
i selected tools and utilities
add a disc
my disc was there
select the disc
click next
you will then right click the unallocated partition
create new partition
and you will then be able to select the size of the partition and partition type

i hope this thread is reviewed and helps everyone...my next quest is to get one of these formatted to WBFS :)