Misterious things about MBR and GPT

[mulambo]

I've recently bought a hard disc that was supposed to be 1TB, but when I connected it to Windows 7, it didn't show up.
I used Swissnife on it (from a WinXP computer), it showed a partition of 426GB, while on Partition Master it shown 931GB and a strange label "GPT" I didn't know what it meant, I thought "maybe just a error, or the disc is defective".
I gave back the disc to the seller and got a new one: same problem. It took me a while to understand I had to know the difference between GPT and MBR. Problem solved, found a tutorial about it and through admin tools I've been able to initialize it properly to 931GB MBR.

My doubts : how come Swissnife was able to recognize only 426 out of 931GB ? Why didn't Windows 7 recognize it originally (when it was GPT) and how come Partition Master wasn't even able to let me do a thing on a GPT partition ... while Windows XP admin tools did the job quite normally ? :shock:

 

[SIW2]

when I connected it to Windows 7, it didn't show up.

It wont show in explorer unless it has a drive letter assigned.

I am not familiar with "swissnife" .

 

[Megahertz07]

If a drive is recognized by BIOS, you can manage the disk properties under Win 7 with Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc). To change from GPT to MBR and from MBR to GPT you have to clean the disk first an then initialize.

You can also use Mini Toll partition wizard that converts without loosing data.

 

[mulambo]

It wont show in explorer unless it has a drive letter assigned.

I am not familiar with "swissnife" .

Yeah it's a tool I used mostly on Windows XP, found it useful sometimes to recover old external drives, maybe it's know also as Swiff Knife or something like that, try googling it

If a drive is recognized by BIOS, you can manage the disk properties under Win 7 with Disk Manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc). To change from GPT to MBR and from MBR to GPT you have to clean the disk first an then initialize.

yes, I've tried it as suggested from one tutorial i've found, but it didn't solve the problem (it gave me "unable to convert to MBR" error, but it recognized it unlike explorer).

Still don't know why, after using Swiss Knife a 931GB was read as 426GB.

 

[SIW2]

Yes, I had already had a look on tinternet for swiss knife.

I am not familiar with it = I have not used it therefore I cannot advise.

 

[samuria]

If you delete all partitions then create new ones it should work