About data inside 3tb external HDD, yes i copied all of it to anothers drives before i tried recover partition with Partitionguru.
Converted to GPT with AOMEI but partitions were no recognized by windows just a 2.7tb unallocated space. I made the ultimate solution and formated it and all fine now.
Just to know if i change this HDD back to USB will occur same problem needing reformat again?
I'm thinking it might have something to do with the way Windows 8 views large drives versus Windows 7.
I don't think so - provided it has been properly formatted as a GPT drive and it now shows as a 3TB drive.
Just to confirm this, with the drive as an internal drive in the Windows 7 machine, post a screenshot of how the drive looks like now in Partition Wizard. Just the first screen after you launch PW.
I know you would have perhaps gone to sleep if the time shown is correct. Does not matter. No urgency here. Do it when you see this post but do it.
Also examine the drive as well as the enclosure. Does it show the Advanced formatting LOGO on it?
EDIT: For further research into the matter, you need to furnish the following data:
1. Make/manufacturer/model number as on the enclosure
2. Make/Manufacturer/Model No/capacity of the HDD as on the HDD
Last edited by jumanji; 07 Jun 2015 at 21:14.
hope you have backups for lost partitons, otherwise you might have to buy recovery software or services
I looked around drive and in label it is marked with a small AF letters.
PW in win7
The drive is a Seagate 3tb expansion STBV3000100 in box, but in reality seagate use their own internals HDD inside this external case.
When i remove it and on HDD label it's a st3000dm001-1ch166. They only put internal HDD inside external cases.
Why do you have that 1GB RAM disk? What are you doing? The instructions were very clear. To remove all extraneous things not relevant here. That can only confuse us.
Anyway, your 3TB GPT drive is indeed formatted as a GPT drive and your full disk capacity is shown. But still the GPT format is not according to Windows specifications. And you do need to reformat it again.
I see you had already put some data in it. Please copy it elsewhere before you reformat it.
Your 3TB drive is now an internal drive on Windows 7 PC. Is it not?
Greg is advising you to wipe it clean and format it. I agree.
But I shall advise you to wipe it clean with HDD Lowlevel format tool. Download the Windows executable version version 4.4 HDDGURU: HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool and use it to wipe your 3TB internal drive clean. Using this tool minimises the possibility of accidentally erasing a wrong disk which so often happens when using diskpart clean/ cleanall..
Once you had written zeroes to all sectors initialise and format the 3TB drive only with Windows Disk Management.
When finished you will have a 128MB MSR (Microsoft System Reserved) partition in the 3TB GPT drive. You may not see it in Windows Disk Management but can see it in Partition Wizard.( Windows deliberately hides it so that users cannot meddle with it.) This 128MB MSR partition is a Windows requirement on a GPT drive. Once all this is done you can create as many partitions as you may want and start using the drive.
Now i get confused, Greg said to remove some useless 100mb system partition and Jumanji say to create GPT with this 128mb partition, whats wrong here?
In the last screen take from win7 there is nothing about 100mb partition...
You're not installing Windows on the 3TB are you? In that case after Quick Wiping the hard drive of boot code and partition table there will be no EFI or MSR partitions created. Just create one or two data partitions as desired in Disk Mgmt. It should retain the GPT initialization.
Using Elevated Command Prompt to run Diskpart Clean Command is not a worry because it cannot wipe the hard drive you're running it from. Just unplug the 1gb FAT32 drive you have shown in Partition Wizard as Disk1 which looks like a flash stick, correct?
You also don't need the longer Zero Fill "Clean All" command which will take ten hours minimum to wipe those particular sectors needed.
i like to always create first partition(100gb) to future proof, sometimes i install new OS there to test.
The 1gb is a RAMDisk from my physical RAM.
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