Solved

4TB Hard drive and I can only use 2TB

I recently bought brand new parts for a computer. This was my first build and I like to game as well as edit videos. So I got a 4TB hard drive. After I finished my install with windows, I noticed that it only recognized 2TB of HDD. Looked this up and found out that that normal drive is in MBR and it is only compatible with 2TB. I watched like 10 youtube videos going through and formatting into a GPT. When going through the diskpart at the initial install, my HDD was then reverted back into a MBR when it installed Windows. Looking through people's videos using the Disk Manager, their screens don't look like mine. I have attached a photo of what my Disk management looks like without and when I right click the 1678.02 unallocated space. If possible I would love to merge the 48GB + 1678.02 GB, shrink the 1999.90 GB partition to about 500GB and have three Volumes, C, D, and E or whatever order it goes in. One being 2TB, another being 500GB, and the last one being whatever is left over ( Just over 1TB.) If you could help, thank you.
4 answers Last reply Best Answer
More about 4tb hard drive 2tb
  1. Try to make partitions before installing Windows under the "drive options" menu. That will meen a new windows install ofc...
  2. Best answer
    In order for windows to use hard drives larger than 2 terabytes the drive must be setup as a GPT disk.
  3. UEFI-based systems. < that is the key
  4. Unless you are using UEFI base, which is another installation.

    You can see here: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1735515/installed-windows-3tb-hdd-registers-2tb-hard-drive.html.

    Normal boot/system drive in Windows must be partition as MBR - which limits to 2TB size. That is why you can not see more the 2TB

    You best bet is move your OS to SSD 120GB and use 4TB as Data drive (GPT)

    You system will be fast and when it crash, more likely the data is intact
Ask a new question

Ask the community

Your question
By posting I confirm I am over 13 years of age and agree to abide by forum Terms of use and Privacy Policies
 
ShareThis Copy and Paste