How to Format a 3TB Disk with WHS 2011,64Bit?

[Raana]

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Hi guys! Haven’t posted for long. Things were running perfect up till now, you see. But now, I have come up with an issue to bother all those experts relaxing out there. So, here goes my issue: I am basically running a Windows Home Server 2011 64 bit which is like running perfect and I have had no major issue with it as of now. But, I recently happened to add an extra 3 TB hard disk. I have added four more before and this is the fifth one that I recently added. The only difference being that all other four were2 TB and this one is 3 TB. And obviously I don’t have any problem with them. I don’t have problem with this either. Just that I am unable to format it for reasons totally unknown. I mean, whenever I try formatting or using the entire disk, it starts throwing problems. And, whenever I go to format the 3 TB disk, it doesn’t do that as desired and shows a stupid error of splitting it into 2 sub partitions of 2Tb and 746 GB each. I was wondering, if there is any condition where in the WHS is limited to disks that bears a size of only less that 2 TB. I can definitely format and efficiently use the first half that is the 2 TB of my hard disk. But, how do I use the second part of it, which is of 746 MB. Is there any reliable option available for me to use it? Or at least format it?

If I go to the Computer management or the disk management panel, there is no option available on the unallocated partitions on the hard disk.

I am disappointedly curious to know what the issue and would love if anyone could come up with an efficient solution that is known to work

[Gameli]

I have had the very same issue and have done an amount of research to die for, I must say. I’ll tell you what the issue is, but a solution is farfetched for me also. The exact issue with the use of a 3TB drive is very closely connected to older computers that might be a few months or years old. The basic cause of the issue has a lot to do with the formula which is: 2^32*512=2,199,023,255,552 or 2.2 TB which is nothing but a scheme that determines the address of the hard disk. These details are basically found in the Legacy BIOSs and the Operating System of the computer. In the formula that I just mentioned, binary number is rightly indicated by 2, the number of bits are indicated by the number 32. The number of bits are nothing but the number of bits allowed in the legacy disk address of the system. Whereas, 512 is the number of bytes at the same place i.e. the legacy hard-drive of the hard disk. If at all, you have a pc where this same formula of 2^32*512=2,199,023,255,552 is used by the BIOS drivers or the input output card or the operating system of the pc you will find high issues in installing, using and formatting the 3TB hard disk.

This situation is very mishandled by the entire fraternity that involves computers. If things were properly analyzed and predicted on time, that there is a strong limit problem of 137 GB which came into picture only in the end of this millennium.

[Faiyaz9]

This is indeed a result of mere negligence by the entire computer fraternity and could be easily avoided. I must say that there are number of computer and Operating system manufacturers who were fine in that regard and have done considerable amount of work to avoid this issue but mere profit and monopoly greed led them to keep the research result to them self. However our most leading provider failed i.e. Microsoft could not find this potential problem and we have our users suffering and unable to use the thing they paid for. However it is not that there is no fix to this issue at all. There definitely is a potential fix. There are n-number of drivers and utility tools available which lets you use a 3TB as a secondary storage device. However, the only hurdle or rather condition out here is that your PC should be having an EFI/UEFI basically EFI stands for Extensible Firmware Interface and UEFI stands for United Extensible Firmware Interface which is random independent version which was built on the EFI which actually belongs to Intel. As soon as the 137 GB issue came into picture, this technology was developed and have been very effective up till date.

[Mayoor]

Ah! These technical experts I tell you! They know everything except for simple solutions what a Layman user asks. I’m sure each and every line discussed here must have been bonkers for you. Anyways, there is a much simpler solution to this. I will explain the steps but with a piece of introduction for people who understand such deep and intense technical terms. Of you also do, well and good for you. The reason why this problem is appearing is that the disk you are formatting is formatted with the use of an MBR style partition, which definitely is not an ideal way to do this. Basically, MBR partition styles are used by X86-based computers and they work perfect for them. When this style of partition is used, the hard disk’s first sector has the basic records for the butting of the system. The sector is basically not partitioned and is kept protected from illegitimate use. Large disks formatted with an MBR partition table will not give you access to more than approximately 2 TB of space on the disk. So you will have to try and switch to GPT style formatting. Because, GPT disks support volumes of up to 18 exabytes (EB) and as many as 128 partitions. In order to switch as desired. You will have to possible try this:

- First of all you have to make sure that there is no data at all on the disk
- All the files that you share on Windows Home Server should be moved to some other partition
- Open an elevated command prompt in your system, using the one of the following steps to it

o Go to the start menu and press on the run button out there
o Inside the text box that appears in the Run command box, type in CMD
o Another option is to go to start as mentioned above in the previous alternative
o go the button reading ‘All programs’ on it and look for accessories and click on it
o there, you will find something that reads ‘Command Prompt’, right click on it
o You will see an appearance of a dialog box that appears on right click of an item. There, you need to select run as admin

- On the black screen of the command prompt, you need to type the text that read ‘diskpart’ and hit enter
- After that, you should be typing ‘List Disk’ and then press enter again to continue
- There, spot your 3 TB disk that you wish to work on, and note its number to move ahead
- Again on the command prompt, type sel disk <number> where, <number> is nothing but the number of disk and press enter again
- After this, you can type, ‘Clean’ and then press Enter to continue
- To mark an end to the procedure, type in ‘Exit’ and press ‘Enter’

Post this, you can use the dashboard so as to partition the disk. This will definitely result into two usable partitions which be 2TB and other one will be around 2 TB