14 Replies Latest reply on Apr 17, 2012 3:18 PM by wftomlin

3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 15, 2012 5:46 PM

I can't belive this is so difficult. I have an Intel DH67GD mobo. I'm running Win7 Home Premium 64 bit. I'm trying to install a Seagate ST3000DM001 (3TB) drive as a storage drive (D:\). Going the 'Control Panel' route, Win7 sees it as a 746.39 GB drive (I specified it as GPT). The Seagate 'DiskWizard' sees it as a 746.6GB drive.

With the above mobo and win7 64 bit OS, shouldn't I be able to use the full 3TB as ONE partition as storage?

Thank you.

1. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

rseiler Apr 15, 2012 6:34 PM (in response to wftomlin)

Yes.

Is it being recognized properly in the BIOS? Which port do you have it connected to?
http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-Barracuda/ST3000DM001-not-recognized-as-SATA-3-drive/td-p/133208

If all looks well there, GPT should have done it for you, but check out some of the things near the end of this article relating to the driver. It could be playing a role. You're on W7 SP1, right? Are you using Intel RST?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408
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2. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 15, 2012 8:43 PM (in response to rseiler)

Thanks for replying.

BIOS indicates it is 3000.5GB. It's connected to port 1 - 6Gb/s. UEFI in BIOS is enabled. When I follow the Windows site, and right click this drive, and choose 'Convert to MBR Disk', it switches to 746.52GB. I repeat for 'Convert to GPT Disk' it switched to 746.39GB.

Attached is a pic of the RST window.
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3. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

rseiler Apr 15, 2012 8:58 PM (in response to wftomlin)

Quite strange. UEFI isn't even needed for what you're doing. It's interesting that RST sees it fine but Disk Manager doesn't. You are on SP1 plus all other Windows Updates, right? I'm pretty sure that there was at least one "large disk" update put out via WU over the last year.
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4. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 15, 2012 9:59 PM (in response to rseiler)

Yeah, I thought UEFI was only used for bootable disks.

I check for updates regularly.
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5. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 16, 2012 9:48 AM (in response to wftomlin)

I booted a 'Live' version of Ubuntu 11.04 and formatted the drive with a GUID Partition Table. Then, I created a partition (using the ENTIRE disk size). It formated OK, but gave me a warning message saying the partition was misaligned by 3072 bytes which could result in poor performance. It suggested repartitioning, but no matter what size I tried, I got some variant of 512 (3072 or 1536).

I ran a 'Read' performance test and the results were:

94.7 MB/s min
214.6 MB/s max
166.1 MB/s avg
Avg seek 14.7ms

Same test on the 500GB (boot) drive were:

49.0 MB/s min
112.3 MB/s max
82.6 MB/s avg
Avg seek 17.7ms

The boot drive is a 3Gb/s and the results are about half of the 3TB, so that makes sense.

Is this gonna give me trouble down the road? Anyone have any free windows disk performance tests I can try? The Linux program a used needed a completely BLANK disk to perform 'write' tests.

I re-booted into windows and the drive appears as a 2,794.52GB drive.

Thanks again for replying.
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6. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

rseiler Apr 16, 2012 10:35 AM (in response to wftomlin)

I wouldn't settle for that, no, and not because of the speeds, which are probably fine. It's always best to let Windows do the disk setup whenever possible, which should be always. Let's see what happens when you try some of the things Cantbecanit mentions in the Seagate thread.
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7. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 16, 2012 5:11 PM (in response to rseiler)

SUCCESS!!

I responded on the Seagate board also.

I basically unhooked my boot disk and started a win7 install on the 3TB drive.

I had some problems when I got to the 'Format' stage. it showed up as 2 partitions - both unallocated:

Disk0 - 2048.0GB
Disk1 - 746.5GB

I couldn't delete either to make ONE larger space. I created a partition on the 2TB space. But I couldn't do anything with the 746 space. I deleted the 2TB partition. There was an error message indicating I couldn't install windows on either system. Something about EFI, although I'd enabled it in the BIOS. Anyway, after deleting and repartitioning a couple of times, It suddenly became ONE partition of 2794GB. I formatted it and hit the power button to kill the install.

I hooked my original win7 drive back up, re-booted and win7 now sees the D: drive as 2,794.30GB.

Thanks again all for replying.
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8. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

rseiler Apr 16, 2012 6:14 PM (in response to wftomlin)

It barely worked, but it worked, good!

Still curious about this though, I looked around a little more.

This article lays it at the feet of RST (even though RST itself shows the right size!), notably versions before 10.1, and most commenters agree, but you would have been using 10.8 or later, right? Still, since it's the exact same problem, RST is a suspect (perhaps the problem resurfaced in some versions since 10.1):
http://www.servethehome.com/fix-746gb-3tb-hard-drive-issue
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9. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 16, 2012 7:24 PM (in response to rseiler)

Interesting read. I'm also using an Intel (D)H67 mobo. I have the same version of RST too (10.0.0.1046).

I just finished using win7 'Error checking' under 'Properties' when you right click a drive and...Chkdsk found some bad sectors. Now, when I check the drive, it appears as 2794.30GB with 745.65GB FREE!!

I'm going to download RST 10.1.0.1008 and see if that clears this up

EDIT

Seems the 10.1.0.1008 driver is for - 'RAID: Rapid Storage Technology Driver for Intel Desktop Boards'
Site says the latest for 'RST and AHCI Driver and GUI' is 10.0.0.1046
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10. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

rseiler Apr 16, 2012 7:15 PM (in response to wftomlin)

Wow. You might go with 10.8, which is a known quantity and solid, or 11.1, which they seem to have just posted despite the misleading date. Finding Intel drivers is a nightmare, since it's very difficult to get a bead on what the latest version of something is. Different pages will show different things. The page for your MB returns neither of the versions below but rather 11.0.

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/highlights/chpsts/imsm
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?ProductID=3381&DwnldID=20984
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11. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

rseiler Apr 16, 2012 10:50 PM (in response to wftomlin)

I'm pretty sure that's just incomplete phrasing. I know for sure that 10.8 isn't RAID-only since it's the one I'm using:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=2101&DwnldID=20624
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12. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 17, 2012 7:27 AM (in response to rseiler)

I'm going to download 10.8.0.1003.

What does this mean:

F6 and RAID BIOS configurations need to be performed prior to installation of this software for proper operation.

I'm starting to think I should have gone with Gigabyte or Asus. I also had trouble with this mobo's ethernet functioning through a switch. Straight from the router it's fine.
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13. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

rseiler Apr 17, 2012 10:26 AM (in response to wftomlin)

That's in reference to setting up RAID in the BIOS (N/A for us) and the potential need for, when installing Windows, hitting F6 and pointing Windows Setup to RST at that time.

For normal AHCI purposes though, it's just a matter of running the RST EXE and then rebooting.
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14. Re: 3TB drive as STORAGE - possible with DH67GD?

wftomlin Apr 17, 2012 3:18 PM (in response to rseiler)

Looks like 10.8.0.1003 worked

After I rebooted I ran chkdsk again. No errors & 2.72TB free!!

Thanks again for the help rseiler. I'm heading over to the Seagate board. There was another person who was having the exact same problem with a DH67xx mobo.
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