Solved 6TB HDD, but BIOS won't allow over 2TB

[Escar Frazzle]

I had a local guy install a new hdd on my PC and asked him to install a 6TB WD HDD. This is before I realized that I can't run a HDD over 2TB. Coincidentally I had already upgrade to two 2TB HDD's a couple of years earlier so I never knew about the problem with my BIOS yet. When he went to change them he found out it wouldn't work, so he partitioned the 6TB HDD in to two 2TB partitions and left the rest unallocated. That covers the needed back story to my problem lol.

Now comes the problem. I wanted to start getting into running a duel boot system and I was going to allocate some room from my D: drive which is the 2TB of my 6TB drive. So I shrunk the D: drive from 2TB to 1.5TB for 0.5TB of space for my other OS. After I shrank it I can't allocate any of it or even expand it back into my unallocated part. I'm not sure how he got it to work in the first place now. I'm new at this so I should add some info that you might need (even tho you won't need it, but something else lol) I have one of my old 2TB drives as Disk 0 for back up and my C: and D: drives as Disk 1. Wiping D: if need isn't a problem, but I would like to avoid wiping C: if I can, but I do have my image for C: saved on my old hard drive.

I do have Paragon Parition Manager to help, but it reads an error that says, "I/O error on hard disk drive 6 has occurred" when opening.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Here's the picture of Disk 1.

 

[lehnerus2000]

SATA Controller

I had an issue when I first tried to install a 3TB HDD that sounds similar to yours (see link below).

Have you checked that you have the correct SATA Controller driver installed?

Check out this thread (post #4 onwards):
3TB HDD GPT Problems

 

[Escar Frazzle]

Thanks lehnerus. I'll look into that. That's the funny thing about it, it worked when the PC guy did it, but after I shrunk it I couldn't extend it again, not even by a single MB. I'm reading your post now.

 

[samuria]

Can you post a full disk manger showing all the details at the top

 

[Escar Frazzle]

I'm using AMD's SATA Controller that's up to date. Can I use Intel's Rapid Storage Technology Drive instead?

 

[Mellon Head]

I'm using AMD's SATA Controller that's up to date. Can I use Intel's Rapid Storage Technology Drive instead?

No. You have an AMD board, with an AMD SATA controller on it. There is no way to use Intel's driver. If you could even get the Intel driver to install, it would probably mess more than a few things up.

Your board also only supports SATA II drives, so I'm not surprised that the partitions are limited to 2TB. SATA III drives will work, just not at full SATA III speed.

 

[Escar Frazzle]

....it would probably mess more than a few things up.

lol. I knew that was stupid when I asked it, but everyone's born ignorant. Thanks for not flaming me.

 

[dg1261]

This is before I realized that I can't run a HDD over 2TB. Coincidentally I had already upgrade to two 2TB HDD's a couple of years earlier so I never knew about the problem with my BIOS yet.

Your screenshot shows you are in fact running a HDD larger than 2TB, so I'm going to extrapolate your statement above to mean your BIOS does not support UEFI or booting from a GPT disk. Referring to the limit as "2TB" is misleading because it will depend on sector size. The 2TB limit is only true if you assume a sector size of 512 bytes.

You haven't stated, but I'll make a guess at other relevant facts: your HDD appears to be using a MBR partition layout rather than GPT, and your HDD is using a 4Kn ("4 KB Native") sector size. Please verify whether or not my assumptions are correct as follows:

In your Disk Management screenshot, right-click on the left end of the disk schematic (where it says "Disk 1") and select "Properties". Select the [Volumes] tab, and note the "Partition style". It should be either GPT or MBR. (I'm guessing MBR.)

Open a command prompt window and enter the following command: "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo c:"
Note the "Bytes per Sector" value. It should be either 512 or 4096. (I'm guessing 4096.)

Here are the ramifications of what you discover.

The MBR partitioning scheme allows for only four primary partitions, or three primaries with one extended partition containing one or more logical partitions. Your Disk Management screenshot shows four primary partitions already exist. So if it is indeed a MBR disk, you cannot create another partition. There's no way around that without deleting one of the other partitions.

The GPT partitioning scheme supports up to 128 primary partitions. However, if your BIOS does not support UEFI booting then you can't boot from a GPT disk. It can be used as a secondary disk, but not as your primary boot disk.

Based on your statement about the BIOS, plus the fact your screenshot does not show an EFI partition, I'm guessing it's initialized as a MBR disk.

Legacy HDDs used a sector size of 512 bytes. This is where the oft-heard "2TB" figure comes from, and is based on the maximum numbers of sectors a MBR disk can address. Your HDD, like all large disks today, will be called "Advanced Format" because it uses sectors of 4096 bytes internally. For compatibility with legacy systems, however, many large HDDs use an interface that makes each 4096-byte internal sector appear to the outside world as eight 512-byte sectors. This is called 512e ("512-byte emulated").

In 512e mode a large HDD can only use the first 2TB on a MBR disk. However, some operating systems are capable of using the HDD in "native" mode instead, seeing each sector as 4096 bytes--hence the term 4Kn ("4KB native"). The fact you appear to have a MBR disk showing up as more than 2TB suggests to me that it's 4Kn rather than 512e.

Per this reference, Windows 7 does not support 4Kn, but Windows 8 and 10 do.

Now, at this point let's note you're in a Windows 7 forum, but your System Specs indicate your OS is Windows 10. Thus, you're in the wrong place. Win7 doesn't support the disk configuration you're using, so your issue won't be familiar to most users here. The Win10 folks are more likely to be able to help you.

One final aside: you said it's a 6TB HDD, but the Disk Management screenshot is showing it to be a 5TB disk. I'm not sure what's going on there, but it's something else you may want to figure out.

 

[Mellon Head]

lol. I knew that was stupid when I asked it, but everyone's born ignorant. Thanks for not flaming me.

I don't flame, my friend. I try to help.

 

[Escar Frazzle]

All right, I'm in school today. That's why I came here. Don't know what to learn if you don't know what questions to ask.

The partition style is MBR and Bytes Per Sector are 512. Took me a second to realize I needed to run as admin. I told you I was a noob.

I was hoping to scoot by with windows 10. It looked like the responses here were quick. I knew I should have stuck with Win 7. I forgot I had a 5TB and not a 6, probably because I couldn't use all of it anyway, an oversight on my part. When you stated I can't have more than four partitions that was a problem, but only part of it. So adding a new one is out, but I'm still stuck not being able to extend D: after I shrunk it. I lost a half TB that I would like to get back.

Even though I upgraded, if you call it that, can I stay? I didn't want to lose support for 7 after a while.

 

[dsperber]

I'd install Partition Wizard Free.

Then I'd use it to "convert MBR to GPT".

As was previously stated, MBR partitioning can only support drives and partitions up to 2TB, and a max of 4 "primary" partitions. Or, 3 primary partitions and the fourth used as an "extended partition" inside of which any number of "logical" partitions can be allocated. This approach (using "logical" partitions) is how you used to have to go if you wanted more than four partitions on your drive. Note that you can only boot from a "primary" partition (i.e. the Boot Manager "system reserved" active partition, in an MBR setup). You can't boot from a "logical" partition.

That all goes away if you use GPT partitioning. No more 2TB limit (i.e. you can support drives larger than 2TB, and you can have partitions larger than 2TB). No more four partition limit. There's no such thing as "primary" or "logical" or "active', etc.

You're running Win10. There cannot be any reason why you can't partition your drive using GPT, and arrange as many GPT partitions as you want of any size (use Partition Wizard to do all of this), and have it be your boot drive.

Your 2TB story is because the 6TB drive is currently partitioned as MBR, and only 2TB of it is visible through MBR. It just needs to be converted to GPT with Partition Wizard and your problems are solved.

Note that Win7 also supports GPT partitioning, and booting to a drive partitioned with GPT.

 

[Escar Frazzle]

Welp, looks like the computers getting wiped tonight. Glad I ran the back up last night. Thanks, I expected to be able to get going again, but I didn't plan on my problems to be completely solved. Should I mark as solved, or can I leave this open while I "try" and convert my drive to GPT?

 

[Mellon Head]

Leave it open while you try to convert in case you have any issues. That way, other members will look in as well.

 

[Escar Frazzle]

Things aren't going, but I guess I should be thankful that their not going badly. I tried to use MiniTool Partition Wizard to convert my disk from MBR to GPT, but I get an error that says "MiniTool Partition Wizard cannot find EFI boot files from your system." I tried it on my old drive and it did it no problem.

 

[Escar Frazzle]

So after some frustrating time clicking and whatnot I decided that instead of keeping a back up image on my old drive I would just clone it. I hit copy disk and when it asked me to select a target disk it wouldn't let me select my old drive because it was disk 1 and the new one was disk 2, or "The specified disk is source disk." as it put it. I thought that this might be why I ran into an error earlier. So I switched my sata cables around and switched my boot. Now I can clone my disk. This gave me a hunch that this could be part of the problem because MiniTool wasn't happy about it. Turns out it didn't help, but you never know when your gut is right. So I'm back to square one.

 

[RoasterMen]

Did you install Windows using UEFI?

 

[Escar Frazzle]

Did you install Windows using UEFI?

I just upgraded to 10 via download. I check my boot menu and it seems that UEFI isn't listed, so I think I'm SOL on this one. I believe I just missed out on UEFI support when I bought my computer in 2010. It's an HP, Model# HPE-210y. I plan on double checking, but if I understand what I've read, it needs to be built in and I don't think it's there.

 

[dg1261]

I believe I just missed out on UEFI support when I bought my computer in 2010. It's an HP, Model# HPE-210y.

Okay, now that we have the model number, we can see from HP's site that the only drivers HP provides are for Vista and Win7, and no BIOS updates at all. Although some models released late in the Win7 era did support UEFI, it's not unusual for most Win7 computers to only support BIOS/MBR booting. In this case, given the drivers available and the fact there are no BIOS updates, it seems doubtful HP ever supported UEFI on that model.

Your examination of the BIOS options tends to agree, so the bottom line is you're stuck with MBR booting on that computer. Note that doesn't mean you can't use a GPT disk, it only means you can't boot from one. If you boot from a MBR disk, a secondary data disk can be GPT.

So if it were me, I'd use two disks. Use one of the 2TB disks with MBR partitioning as your OS disk, and the 5TB disk with GPT partitioning as your data disk. If you redirect your user document folders to the 5TB, you should have more than enough room on the 2TB to split it up into as many multibooted OS partitions as you want. Note: a side benefit of redirecting your user documents is that you can make the same documents available to every OS, regardless of which OS you boot.

If you wipe the 5TB and reinitialize it as GPT, you can recreate partitions using the full 5TB. It could even be a single, giant partition if you want. Even the half-witted Disk Management can handle that, though I'd still use Partition Wizard because it's more reliable than Microsoft's tools.

 

[Escar Frazzle]

...... so the bottom line is you're stuck with MBR booting on that computer. Note that doesn't mean you can't use a GPT disk, it only means you can't boot from one. If you boot from a MBR disk, a secondary data disk can be GPT.

This explains why I was able to convert my old drive to GPT. That's better news than I was expecting. This all started with wanting to duel boot Win 10 and Linux, Win 98 for shits and giggles. I suppose now I'll bring in my spare 2TB disk to put what I want to keep on it, change the other 2TB back to MBR and install Win 10 on it. It's too bad I leave for work in 15 minutes. I should have this hammered out during the weekend. I'll probably have quite a few more questions to make sure I do this right. Searching online only helps so much until you need more specific answers. I'm going to leave this open until then, I know every time I google a thread 90% of the time it dies unexpectedly. You guys have been a huge help.

Edit: I'm still confused as to why I can't expand my partition I shrunk. The PC guy here managed, but I suppose that doesn't matter now.

 

[dsperber]

This explains why I was able to convert my old drive to GPT. That's better news than I was expecting. This all started with wanting to duel boot Win 10 and Linux, Win 98 for shits and giggles. I suppose now I'll bring in my spare 2TB disk to put what I want to keep on it, change the other 2TB back to MBR and install Win 10 on it.

Win98 doesn't support GPT partitioning you're now planning on your second drive, so just keep that in mind. But if it is all self-contained on the MBR drive, you will still be able to use it.

Edit: I'm still confused as to why I can't expand my partition I shrunk. The PC guy here managed, but I suppose that doesn't matter now.

Don't know what tool you were using to do the shrinkage and attempt the re-expansion, but you're best bet is simply to rely on Partition Wizard for any of these tasks involving resizing, deleting, moving and sliding, creating, converting, copying, combining, converting "primary" to "logical" and vice versa on MBR, converting MBR to GPT, etc.. It can do some pretty remarkable things, and in my experience over the many years I've been using it has been 100% failsafe.