New hardrive trouble.

ShadowFalls · 17 Jul 2013

Hello. I just upgraded all the guts of my computer and I've run into a issue. I bought 2 of these hardrives: Western Digital WD Black WD4001FAEX 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - Newegg.com and just installed them. Originally I didn't want windows to partition them but it went ahead and did it anyway and now here is where the issue starts. A couple of the partitions are showing up as "Unallocated" volumes and I can't seem to create a new volume out of them. Look at the screen shot to see what i mean.

bobafetthotmail · 17 Jul 2013

That's because the popup partitioner program is dumb and cannot make GPT disks (the max partition size of a MBR disk is 2 TB like the partitions in your screenshot). This tutorial to fix it.

Although I don't know if your motherboard can boot from GPT disks, in theory it should (windows 7 does support GPT disks fine).

ShadowFalls · 17 Jul 2013

thanks I'll give it a try

ShadowFalls · 17 Jul 2013

also my goal is to merge the partitions that aren't necessary together

ShadowFalls · 17 Jul 2013

there is one issue i'm having and that is that I cant delete the volumes that my os is running off of which means i can't convert the drive that the os is running off of. Also it's kind of weird but if you look at my screen shot again I guess the windows 7 install messed up and for some reason put the system reserved memory on the other hardrive rather then the c drive so it wont let me delete that volume either.

ShadowFalls · 17 Jul 2013

The drives I want to convert are Disk 0 and Disk 1 and my motherboard is a Gigabyte X79-UP4

bobafetthotmail · 17 Jul 2013

ShadowFalls said:

also my goal is to merge the partitions that aren't necessary together

If you mean removing the 100 MB system reserved partition, this tutorial. Works regardless of where the 100 mb partition is at the moment, and then you can delete it.

I cant delete the volumes that my os is running off of which means i can't convert the drive that the os is running off of.

Same tutorial linked about converting to GPT, OPTION TWO, step 2. If you do it from the recovery part of the installation disk you are sure it will work.

ShadowFalls · 17 Jul 2013

I guess I have to restart before I can delete the 100mb system reserve partition, so I'll get back to you tomorrow and let you know if everything works out since I'm in the midst of moving a large amount of files from one hard drive to another

TVeblen · 17 Jul 2013

You should plan on reinstalling Windows 7 fresh. That way you can wipe the disks, initialize them GPT, partition them any way you want, and not have to deal with any Windows file system issues.

If you waited too long before asking this question and you have already spent hours installing programs and configuring, then you could make a disk image of the SR and C drive and restore them to the 'new' disk after you have done the conversion.

TVeblen · 17 Jul 2013

Note: Regarding Windows 7 and GPT disks:

Any 64-bit version of Windows 7 will boot from a GPT format disk/partition provided it is on a UEFI based system.
32 bit versions of Windows7 will not. Neither will any version of XP.
Legacy BIOS systems can read and write to GPT disks, but do not support booting an OS from one.
You cannot mix disk formats - have MBR and GPT on the same hard drive. You can have mixed formats on different drives, but the Boot Partition must be on the GPT disk in UEFI systems.