HDD not recognised correctly? Bad batch?

[Odom Member]

I purchased two 4TB HGST Deskstar drives (HGST HDS724040ALE640). I put both into my PC and one of them Windows 7 recognises as 4TB, but the other one says it's only 1677.90GB.

 

The Drive tool from HGST Drive Fitness Test for Windows lists a capacity of 3726GB.

When I went into the Disk Management, Windows detected the drive and I partitioned it to GPT, same as the other one. However the capacity only shows half of what it should be.

I tried connecting it to different SATA ports and cables, but nothing changes.

 

Do you think this could simply be a bad batch? A faulty drive?

 

Thanks,

 

Odom

[manhunt]

What motherboard do you have in your rig?

 

Might be a chipset or SATA Controller driver issue?

 

Have you updated your BIOS to the latest version?

[Unksi]

Have you tried it with the same cable and SATA port as with the working drive? And have you tried it without the working drive?

[xendrome]

Where did you order the drive from?

[snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member]

I'd suggest you make sure you have up-to-date disk management drivers (probably RST). I rather doubt it is the drive itself. Just googling and I see people with exactly the same issue for 4TB drives and exactly the same size cutoff you listed.

 

Also, does your BIOS report the full capacity for the disk? If not, it is more than likely a BIOS issue and not a driver issue.

[D. S. Veteran]

Is your PC the one in the signature? If so, what BIOS version are you running? It probably requires some extra software to work around the BIOS limitations for >2TB HDDs, despite there being a beta BIOS that supposedly supports >3TB drives.

[Odom Member]

What motherboard do you have in your rig?

 

Might be a chipset or SATA Controller driver issue?

 

Have you updated your BIOS to the latest version?

 

I have a Gigabyte X58A-UD5, with firmware FA.

I don't think so, as I am using the same port and cable as for the other drive and that one was fine.

I have just updated the BIOS to the latest version, Fe5. Once back into Windows it detected a lot of hardware ports again. After a second reboot I checked the Disk Management and the drive is recognised properly with the size it is supposed to have, 3725.90GB. Thank you very much for the hint. I haven't updated the BIOS since I bought this motherboard 3 years ago. I'm always hesitant to mess with the BIOS upgrades.

Gigabytes website listed for this firmware Fe5 added support for 3TB+ drives.

 

 

Have you tried it with the same cable and SATA port as with the working drive? And have you tried it without the working drive?

 

Yes, I have tried both. Unplugged the good one and plugged in this drive.

 

Where did you order the drive from?

 

I purchased both drives from www.alternate.de. I pretty much get all my components from there.

 

I'd suggest you make sure you have up-to-date disk management drivers (probably RST). I rather doubt it is the drive itself. Just googling and I see people with exactly the same issue for 4TB drives and exactly the same size cutoff you listed.

 

Also, does your BIOS report the full capacity for the disk? If not, it is more than likely a BIOS issue and not a driver issue.

 

I couldn't find a place in the BIOS that reported the capacity, it would only show me the product models.

 

 

In short, I updated the BIOS with Gigabytes @BIOS tool and the drive is now being correctly detected and I can use the full capacity. Many thanks for your quick help!!! It is really appreciated (Y)

[Odom Member]

Hi D.S.,

 

You posted your message whilst I was still writing mine.

 

Yes, my rig is the one in my signature. I have been running 3TB drives for quite some time and never had any issues, so I apparently falsely assumed that the >2TB limitation was not applying to me anymore. I wasn't aware that my motherboard had a >3TB limitation as well.

I got one of the latest BIOS (Fe5) that adds support for 3TB+, however it also says it is a Beta BIOS.

[patseguin Global Moderator]

Is it Windows not recognizing the drive capacity right? Does it show the right capacity in BIOS? Sounds like maybe worth exchanging the drive. Running those in RAID0 would be sweet.

[D. S. Veteran]

Hi D.S.,

 

You posted your message whilst I was still writing mine.

 

Yes, my rig is the one in my signature. I have been running 3TB drives for quite some time and never had any issues, so I apparently falsely assumed that the >2TB limitation was not applying to me anymore. I wasn't aware that my motherboard had a >3TB limitation as well.

I got one of the latest BIOS (Fe5) that adds support for 3TB+, however it also says it is a Beta BIOS.

 

Knowing GIGABYTE, it will never leave the Beta stage so no worries there. If it works, it works.

[Open Minded]

Try a different controller.  I had this same problem when I swapped my guts into a new case last week.  Hard drives that were working, gave the same error you're talking about.  I had to change both controllers to IDE mode until I rewire and fix it.

[JJ_]

Please read before posting, OP fixed his problem updating his BIOS 3 days ago...