new external hard drive problems

B

bri8an

New Member
hi i have a new 3tb hard drive and am currently having 2 problems with it
i am using it as an external hard drive through a usb sata dock

my os is xp and i had to use a windows 7 pc to change it to mbr from gpt because i read that xp can only use 2tb, i did this on the win7 machine, it cut it into 2 partitions, i then formatted the larger 2tb, this took 28 hours

problem 1:
i then tried to format the smaller partition but new simple disk was greyed out, i could not resolve this

problem 2:
i then put it into my xp computer to see if i could format it there but the drive was not recognized at all and didn't show up in my computer or disk management


is there a way to resolve these issues so i can use this drive with my xp computer?

thank you so much if you can help
 
ok update

i reconnected it to the win7 pc and changed it to gpt, quick formatted it NTFS and then reconnected it to my xp pc, now it does show up in disk managementon xp although as a gpt disk and only 2tb

so it now shows up on the xp computer but i can't do anything with it, can't format it in xp, cant change it to mbr in xp, can't use it in xp, still need help

thanks
 
Last edited:
ok thanks agent smith i just installed it on xp

it just shows up as gpt disk, can't do anything with it though
 
You probably have to forget using using GPT if you are going to use the drive with Windows XP 32-bit. Windows XP 64-bit did support it.

Have you tried to format the drive strictly with MBR as 2TB in Windows 7? Windows XP may work with it then. Of course you will have to forget about the lost 1TB but that may be your only option with that drive.

Another option if you only have Windows XP is to sell the drive and get one that is 2TB. That way you know it will work with Windows XP 32-bit.

I have heard that some vendors sell drives with special hardware that support 512e. They are supposed to overcome the 2TB limitation with O/Ss like XP. I don't have any personal experience with these so I can't verify if that is true.
 
MisterEd said:
You probably have to forget using using GPT if you are going to use the drive with Windows XP 32-bit. Windows XP 64-bit did support it.

Have you tried to format the drive strictly with MBR as 2TB in Windows 7? Windows XP may work with it then. Of course you will have to forget about the lost 1TB but that may be your only option with that drive.

Another option if you only have Windows XP is to sell the drive and get one that is 2TB. That way you know it will work with Windows XP 32-bit.

I have heard that some vendors sell drives with special hardware that support 512e. They are supposed to overcome the 2TB limitation with O/Ss like XP. I don't have any personal experience with these so I can't verify if that is true.
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mistered hi

yeah i've found out the hard way about gpt and i know that my xp 32 will not support it

i have indeed converted to mbr on win 7 and formatted the 2tb partition using win 7. this took 28hrs.

when i couldn't format the remaining smaller partition as i explained in the op, i was ready to accept that and just use the drive as a 2tb drive on xp but it would not work at all on the xp machine and only showed up (on the xp machine at all-in disk management) when i scrapped the formatted mbr partiton and converted to gpt: obviously i still could not use this on xp 32

i have tried as many bits of software as my hours of searching have found, too many to list here, i can't remember them anyway

i'm ready to give up on it, if anyone has any more ideas i will try again

thanks for replying
 
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