Deleting Partitions/Formating HDD

[Allen Drake]

I have this HDD
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/barracuda-xt/

That is showing as a 2TB drive. In disk management I see an
unallocated 750Gig partition and I want to restore this drive to it's
original 3TB size. Can someone tell me the best and quickest way to
get this done? I had this drive put away as a cloned drive of a system
and just now noticed what somehow has happened. I get confused when I
am using cloning applications when I am dealing with drives of
different sizes. I have since moved on to using all Crucial 256GB SSDs
on all my systems to keep things simple. Downside is these drives
always seem to need firmware updates that don't seem to like being
done with USB connection.

Thanks for any help and comments.

Al

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

I have this HDD
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/barracuda-xt/



That is showing as a 2TB drive. In disk management I see an
unallocated 750Gig partition and I want to restore this drive to it's
original 3TB size. Can someone tell me the best and quickest way to
get this done? I had this drive put away as a cloned drive of a
system and just now noticed what somehow has happened. I get confused
when I am using cloning applications when I am dealing with drives
of different sizes. I have since moved on to using all Crucial 256GB
SSDs on all my systems to keep things simple. Downside is these
drives always seem to need firmware updates that don't seem to like
being done with USB connection.

I'm fuzzy on the circumstances. If it is not the active operating
system, you can do what you want with Windows Disk Management
(Start>Programs>Administrative Tools>Disk Management). If you want to
preserve the data on the disk, resize the partition to use the whole
disk (Right click>Extend volume). If you don't care about saving the
data, you can alternately delete the partition and create a new one,
using the whole disk.

If the partition in question is the active operating system, you will
have to use a third party partitioning program. There are several free
ones available.

 

[Allen Drake]

I'm fuzzy on the circumstances. If it is not the active operating
system, you can do what you want with Windows Disk Management
(Start>Programs>Administrative Tools>Disk Management). If you want to
preserve the data on the disk, resize the partition to use the whole
disk (Right click>Extend volume). If you don't care about saving the
data, you can alternately delete the partition and create a new one,
using the whole disk.

If the partition in question is the active operating system, you will
have to use a third party partitioning program. There are several free
ones available.

This is a spare drive that shows in disk management as two
partitions. One is active and shows as 2048.00 GB and healthy(primary
partition) there is an unallocated 746.52 GB. I want to restore this
to a 3TB drive that is one partition and healthy. I have found no way
to do this in disk management that I understand. If I right click and
format it only formats as the 2TB. If I right click on the 746 GB
unallocated part I can do nothing.

 

[Allen Drake]

I'm fuzzy on the circumstances. If it is not the active operating
system, you can do what you want with Windows Disk Management
(Start>Programs>Administrative Tools>Disk Management). If you want to
preserve the data on the disk, resize the partition to use the whole
disk (Right click>Extend volume). If you don't care about saving the
data, you can alternately delete the partition and create a new one,
using the whole disk.

If the partition in question is the active operating system, you will
have to use a third party partitioning program. There are several free
ones available.

BTW Extend volume is grayed out.

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

BTW Extend volume is grayed out.

Okay. I have no experience with drives that big. You apparently have run up
against a partition size limit. Watch for wrap:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/...anding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage.aspx

 

[Allen Drake]

Okay. I have no experience with drives that big. You apparently have run up
against a partition size limit. Watch for wrap:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/...anding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage.aspx

Do you have an understanding of diskpart commands?

 

[Wolf K]

This is a spare drive that shows in disk management as two
partitions. One is active and shows as 2048.00 GB and healthy(primary
partition) there is an unallocated 746.52 GB. I want to restore this
to a 3TB drive that is one partition and healthy. I have found no way
to do this in disk management that I understand. If I right click and
format it only formats as the 2TB. If I right click on the 746 GB
unallocated part I can do nothing.

"Unallocated" means there is no partition there, just empty sectors.

In theory, you should be able to either create a new partition in the
unallocated space, or to extend the primary partition.

In a follow-up, you say that "Extend..." is greyed out. This indicates
problem(s) that I speculate cannot be resolved without a complete
reformatting of the whole disk. Just a guess.

IMO, that leaves only the option of creating another partition. Try it.
If that doesn't work, you'll need more help than I can give you.

Good luck,
Wolf K.

PS: here's a simplified account of "partition" etc:
A "partition" is a list of tracks and sectors available for use.
Its structure depends on the "file system". A file system is a method of
listing and allocating tracks and sectors to partitions, folders, and
files. When you "format a disk", the OS writes file-system information
onto the disk. When you "create a partition", the OS writes relevant
data onto the HDD. File system and partition data are stored in the
Master Boot Record for the HDD, along with boot data for the OS.
Each partition includes an automatically generated default file
that lists the files and folders in that partition. The necessary
bookkeeping could be done entirely by the HDD itself, without any OS
involvement, but for many different reasons, OS involvement is
preferred. One consequence is the kind of problem you're facing.
For historical reasons, Windows displays partitions as disks,
which can be confusing.
WEK

 

[Allen Drake]

"Unallocated" means there is no partition there, just empty sectors.

In theory, you should be able to either create a new partition in the
unallocated space, or to extend the primary partition.

In a follow-up, you say that "Extend..." is greyed out. This indicates
problem(s) that I speculate cannot be resolved without a complete
reformatting of the whole disk. Just a guess.

IMO, that leaves only the option of creating another partition. Try it.
If that doesn't work, you'll need more help than I can give you.

Good luck,
Wolf K.

PS: here's a simplified account of "partition" etc:
A "partition" is a list of tracks and sectors available for use.
Its structure depends on the "file system". A file system is a method of
listing and allocating tracks and sectors to partitions, folders, and
files. When you "format a disk", the OS writes file-system information
onto the disk. When you "create a partition", the OS writes relevant
data onto the HDD. File system and partition data are stored in the
Master Boot Record for the HDD, along with boot data for the OS.
Each partition includes an automatically generated default file
that lists the files and folders in that partition. The necessary
bookkeeping could be done entirely by the HDD itself, without any OS
involvement, but for many different reasons, OS involvement is
preferred. One consequence is the kind of problem you're facing.
For historical reasons, Windows displays partitions as disks,
which can be confusing.
WEK

I tried deleting the partition and creating a new one but that only
gets me back to the original problem. I have found links to
information on using drives over 2TB with Win7 so I have some reading
to do. I have an external 3TB USB 3 drive that works fine so I may
just use it that way for now but my curiosity will get the best of me
and I will eventually find out what needs to be known.
Thanks.

Al

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

Do you have an understanding of diskpart commands?

I know what they are, but I have never used them. I think they will have
the same limitations as the GUI manager, including the 2 TB limit. Give
it a try. Since you don't care about saving data, you can't hurt anything.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465(v=ws.10).aspx

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

I have this HDD
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/barracuda-xt/

That is showing as a 2TB drive. In disk management I see an
unallocated 750Gig partition and I want to restore this drive to it's
original 3TB size. Can someone tell me the best and quickest way to
get this done? I had this drive put away as a cloned drive of a system
and just now noticed what somehow has happened. I get confused when I
am using cloning applications when I am dealing with drives of
different sizes. I have since moved on to using all Crucial 256GB SSDs
on all my systems to keep things simple. Downside is these drives
always seem to need firmware updates that don't seem to like being
done with USB connection.

Thanks for any help and comments.

Al

Try giving the free (for home use) program EasUS Partition Master.

Here is a link for information on the program

http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/help/video-tutorial.htm

You can download the free home edition at:

http://www.partition-tool.com/landing/home-download.htm

At the worst it should be able to delete all partitions found on the
drive and create one large partition for you.

 

[Allen Drake]

I know what they are, but I have never used them. I think they will have
the same limitations as the GUI manager, including the 2 TB limit. Give
it a try. Since you don't care about saving data, you can't hurt anything.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766465(v=ws.10).aspx

Oh, I tried but I am having a hard time understanding what all that
means. The syntax and all. It might just be simpler to use this drive
in my USB cradle as it's just a file backup anyway. I tried the format
command where I types Diskpart and then select disk 3 then I can't
understand the format procedure. I type help format and enter
everything that it says and that is where it ends.
Try try again............

 

[Allen Drake]

Try giving the free (for home use) program EasUS Partition Master.

Here is a link for information on the program


You can download the free home edition at:

At the worst it should be able to delete all partitions found on the
drive and create one large partition for you.

Ya, I saw that app but I always hesitate to download things that
don't come recommended personally. I never really know what I might
get. Iv 'e thought of partition magic also so maybe I will do
something like that.

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

Ya, I saw that app but I always hesitate to download things that
don't come recommended personally. I never really know what I might
get. Iv 'e thought of partition magic also so maybe I will do
something like that.

For a personal recommendation, I have used the program on many drives
from time to time to create or delete partitions.

I have used it to change the size of partitions when needed with out
deleting the user data but I also keep a backup copy of the data prior
to doing that just in case things go wrong.

 

[Allen Drake]

Try giving the free (for home use) program EasUS Partition Master.

Here is a link for information on the program


You can download the free home edition at:

At the worst it should be able to delete all partitions found on the
drive and create one large partition for you.

Success. I have formatted this disk and it shows as 2.72 TB. I needed
to enter the Clean function before the format procedure. I found no
documentation suggesting this so I tried it anyway and it worked.

So to break it down:

Command line: diskpart
then enter: list disk
this will show the disks online

Then enter the disk number you want to format so I entered selected
disk 2

It replied Disk 2 is now the selected disk.
I entered: Clean
it took a few seconds then I entered:

Format fs=ntfs label "new volume" quick

new volume was the name of that disk.

http://www.jwgoerlich.us/blogengine...Diskpart-to-Create-and-Format-Partitions.aspx

Al.

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

Ya, I saw that app but I always hesitate to download things that
don't come recommended personally. I never really know what I might
get. Iv 'e thought of partition magic also so maybe I will do
something like that.

Those apps will run into the same 2 TB limit as Disk Management. Find
out if they have some magic workaround before you download. It's
something they'd brag about.

 

[VanguardLH]

I have this HDD
http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/desktop-hard-drives/barracuda-xt/

That is showing as a 2TB drive. In disk management I see an
unallocated 750Gig partition and I want to restore this drive to it's
original 3TB size. ...

Although NTFS itself can handle partition sizes up to 16 EB, the NTFS
driver only goes up to 256 TB (and 16 TB for file size). Well, that's
bigger than 3 TB but read on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Limitations
"Maximum volume size" section

That says the max partition size is 16 TB when using the default 4KB
cluster size. It's getting smaller. However, there's something more on
restricting the size of a partition, any partition. Read on.

You are probably using the old partitioning scheme where sector 0 is the
MBR which contains the partition table (4 partition records), disk ID,
and bootstrap code area; see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record.
Each partition record is just 16 bytes (128 bits) long. See the layout
shown for a partition record in the "Disk Partitioning" section. Likely
you have the BIOS configured to use LBA mode (which counts by sectors).
That means you have 4 bytes (32 bits) for LBA parameters inside the
16-byte partition record to specify the starting sector and sector count
(size) of a partition. Each sector is 512 bytes (2^9 bytes) in size.
So you can have a partition up to 2^41 bytes, or 2 terabytes.

See:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938432.aspx
"Maximum Sizes on NTFS Volumes" section.

The partition size limitation is why the GUID scheme got introduced.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table. While Windows
Vista/7 support GPT partitioning, your BIOS might not.

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

Those apps will run into the same 2 TB limit as Disk Management. Find
out if they have some magic workaround before you download. It's
something they'd brag about.

They tend to downplay rather than brag but here is one excerpt from
their web site.

"IDE, SATA, SCSI, USB removable hard disk, and Firewire hard disk (MBR
and GPT hard disks) are all supported by EaseUS Partition Master. EaseUS
Partition Master can support 2TB+ hard disk and 32 disks at most. EaseUS
Partition Master can also support removable device, such as flash drive,
memory card, memory stick and so on."

Those drives larger than 2TB you have to choose the GPT type of
partitioning rather than MBR and you have to be running an OS that can
handle GPT partitions like Windows 7 among others.

 

[VanguardLH]

Success. I have formatted this disk and it shows as 2.72 TB. I needed
to enter the Clean function before the format procedure. I found no
documentation suggesting this so I tried it anyway and it worked.

So to break it down:

Command line: diskpart
then enter: list disk
this will show the disks online

Then enter the disk number you want to format so I entered selected
disk 2

It replied Disk 2 is now the selected disk.
I entered: Clean
it took a few seconds then I entered:

Format fs=ntfs label "new volume" quick

new volume was the name of that disk.

http://www.jwgoerlich.us/blogengine...Diskpart-to-Create-and-Format-Partitions.aspx

Al.

You sure you never ran Seagate's DiscWizard software? The partition
table (as I mentioned in my other reply) will limit you to a 2TB
partition size unless you migrate from the old MBR scheme to the new GPT
scheme - or if you change the default cluster size from 4KB to something
bigger, like 64KB, must that means even more drive capacity loss per
file due to slack space at the end of each one; i.e., 1 file that has
5KB of real data within it will occupy 1 cluster so it eats up 64KB on
the hard disk.

Break the 2TB Barrier
http://www.seagate.com/files/staticfiles/docs/pdf/whitepaper/mb615-break-2-1-barrier-us.pdf
Yeah, a "virtual device driver". Back when they needed to first break
the 512MB barrier and then later 132GB, drive makers pushed a "drive
overlay manager". This was software that usurped the MBR's bootstrap
area to load before the OS to translate disk calls to remap them.

The above article tells you to install the DiscWizard software. That
means you are loading their drive overlay manager to handle the
remapping so access can exceed the 2TB limit of the MBR partition
table's 16-byte partition record entries with the 4-byte (32-bit)
addressing limit of LBA mode. Software is always slower than hardware
which means having to use a drive overlay manager or device driver (to
remap) will impact performance of the device.

Tech Insight: Beyond 2TB on the Desktop
http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/beyond-2tb-on-the-desktop-master-ti/
at the 0:55 time mark, mentions having a non-OS partition above 2.1TB by
using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme. That requires BIOS
support. You might've ended up converting from MBR to GPT in order to
get to the 2.72TB you said you achieved. If this is your non-OS
partition then you have no more to do. If you want your Windows boot
partition to exceed 2.1TB, you need a BIOS that supports the newer UEFI
standard. You never identified your mobo's brand and model so you'll
have to check if it supports UEFI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uefi).

Be aware that some disk utilities still don't yet support GPT.

 

[Allen Drake]

Although NTFS itself can handle partition sizes up to 16 EB, the NTFS
driver only goes up to 256 TB (and 16 TB for file size). Well, that's
bigger than 3 TB but read on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS#Limitations
"Maximum volume size" section

That says the max partition size is 16 TB when using the default 4KB
cluster size. It's getting smaller. However, there's something more on
restricting the size of a partition, any partition. Read on.

You are probably using the old partitioning scheme where sector 0 is the
MBR which contains the partition table (4 partition records), disk ID,
and bootstrap code area; see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record.
Each partition record is just 16 bytes (128 bits) long. See the layout
shown for a partition record in the "Disk Partitioning" section. Likely
you have the BIOS configured to use LBA mode (which counts by sectors).
That means you have 4 bytes (32 bits) for LBA parameters inside the
16-byte partition record to specify the starting sector and sector count
(size) of a partition. Each sector is 512 bytes (2^9 bytes) in size.
So you can have a partition up to 2^41 bytes, or 2 terabytes.

See:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938432.aspx
"Maximum Sizes on NTFS Volumes" section.

The partition size limitation is why the GUID scheme got introduced.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table. While Windows
Vista/7 support GPT partitioning, your BIOS might not.

Thanks for all that. I simply solved the issue by using Diskpart
which is a replacement for Fdisk. I guess this old BIOS supports
everything needed. The problem with doing all the reading I did was
that so much of it to do with old outdated information and more time
was spent sifting over that useless material. It's nice to know all
that 2^41 bytes stuff but who can remember it all

 

[Allen Drake]

You sure you never ran Seagate's DiscWizard software? The partition
table (as I mentioned in my other reply) will limit you to a 2TB
partition size unless you migrate from the old MBR scheme to the new GPT
scheme - or if you change the default cluster size from 4KB to something
bigger, like 64KB, must that means even more drive capacity loss per
file due to slack space at the end of each one; i.e., 1 file that has
5KB of real data within it will occupy 1 cluster so it eats up 64KB on
the hard disk.

Break the 2TB Barrier
http://www.seagate.com/files/staticfiles/docs/pdf/whitepaper/mb615-break-2-1-barrier-us.pdf
Yeah, a "virtual device driver". Back when they needed to first break
the 512MB barrier and then later 132GB, drive makers pushed a "drive
overlay manager". This was software that usurped the MBR's bootstrap
area to load before the OS to translate disk calls to remap them.

The above article tells you to install the DiscWizard software. That
means you are loading their drive overlay manager to handle the
remapping so access can exceed the 2TB limit of the MBR partition
table's 16-byte partition record entries with the 4-byte (32-bit)
addressing limit of LBA mode. Software is always slower than hardware
which means having to use a drive overlay manager or device driver (to
remap) will impact performance of the device.

Tech Insight: Beyond 2TB on the Desktop
http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/beyond-2tb-on-the-desktop-master-ti/
at the 0:55 time mark, mentions having a non-OS partition above 2.1TB by
using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme. That requires BIOS
support. You might've ended up converting from MBR to GPT in order to
get to the 2.72TB you said you achieved. If this is your non-OS
partition then you have no more to do. If you want your Windows boot
partition to exceed 2.1TB, you need a BIOS that supports the newer UEFI
standard. You never identified your mobo's brand and model so you'll
have to check if it supports UEFI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uefi).

Be aware that some disk utilities still don't yet support GPT.

If that wizard did it he did so when I had my back turned. I will
have to have a talk with that fellow.