3TB external suddenly becomes 746GB unallocated

Evening,

Seagate 3TB (ST3000DM001) in a Thermaltake BlacX (USB+E-Sata) docking station that had 5 partitions spread over the actual drive's capacity, now registers as 746.5GB unallocated.

I connected the dock to a Win 7 desktop through E-Sata and copied files off of the external successfully. Shortly after I plug it into a Vista x64 laptop (machine it has been used with predominately and problem free) and I get back to business. A few minutes later I notice the partitions aren't visible/746GB unallocated.

Disk Management, TestDisk, PhotoRec, Partition Guru, etc all display 746GB instead of 3TB. The Vista laptop is the only machine I have access to at the moment so the scans/tests are being done with that. If detecting the 3TB (so I can then recover all the partitions) necessitates a system/interface change, that can happen.


Can see the files on this partition


No files on this one


Can see the files on this partition

Just to clarify, were you using this dock with that 3TB HDD on your Vista machine earlier and was it showing full 3TB with all five partitions?

jumanji said:

Just to clarify, were you using this dock with that 3TB HDD on your Vista machine earlier and was it showing full 3TB with all five partitions?

Correct.

OK. Will it be possible now to connect it back to that Windows 7 machine as before and check its status? If possible post a full screenshot of Windows 7 Disk Management after hiding the Console Tree and Action Pane by clicking on the buttons on the top tool bar.( Don't worry if you can't do it now. I know it is night time. You can do it tomorrow. I am not going to give any instant solution :).)

That will give us an idea whether the partitions have really been lost.

Not for a few days. In the mean time is there any other information that would be useful to you?

OK, I would like to see the 1.Windows Disk Management on your Vista machine. ( Please plug out any other external drives connected to the machine and only the 3TB HDD on the Dock) 2. The first screen when you run Partition Wizard.

From what i have heard, IRST version 10.1 or newer is required to support larger capacity drives. Since the drive worked before without issues, this may not be the case. However it will worth a try ( nothing to loose ).

First unplug the HDD and then install the last version of IRST which supports Vista. Unfortunately there is no direct download available so download and install version 10.1 from the below link.

Download Intel Rapid Storage Technology v.10.1.0.1008. Intel ICH10

(inside the archive there will be "iatacd.exe" ).

After rebooting, try reconnecting the drive.

Hi there.

There's a 2TB limitation on directory (folder) sizes on pre Win 7 OS'es.

To get full 3TB you need to format the HDD as a GPT drive. Note this won't then boot from VISTA. You can use it as a data drive though.

If you convert it to GPT you'll of course be able to use it on W7 / W8 etc.

Cheers
jimbo

jumanji said:

1.windows disk management on your vista machine.
2.the first screen when you run partition wizard.

Anshad Edavana said:

Since the drive worked before without issues, this may not be the case. However it will worth a try ( nothing to loose ).

I'm mid-backup (to Win 7 machine) right now so I'll give anything a go if there's no risk to the data.


Appreciate the help so far everyone.