Can't Initialize or Format 3TB SATA HD

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I’ve been using a 2TB WD Caviar Green SATA HD in a USB docking station for a couple of years. I’ve tried swapping it for a Hitachi 3TB SATA and for a WD Caviar Green 3TB SATA.  Both show up in Disk Management as Disk 18, 746.39 GB Unallocated.  Right Clicking in the Unallocated space brings up only “New Simple Volume.”  Right clicking on the left brings up “Convert to Dynamic Disk or Convert to MBR Disk.”
I get the same conditions connecting direct to the MB. Since the 2TB is seen OK I can only think this is something to do with the size or do I have a SATA/GPT compatibility problem?  Can anyone help please?

HP Pavilion p6799 Desktop (3 years old)
Windows 7 Home Premium
MS-7613 (Ilona-GL8E) MB
Intel Core i5 650 Processor
NVIDIA GeForce GT420
Integrated Intel H57

2

Hi,

If I understand you correctly, you replaced your 2tb dive with a 3tb drive in an external drive enclosure.

It could be that the enclosure can only handle drives up to 2tb, you need to contact the enclosure’s manufacturer to see if that is the case.

If so, you would have to get a new external case that can handle the drive.

Hope this helps.

3

It could be a limitation of the operating system or hardware. Perhaps a newer BIOS (if available) would help. If I remember correctly, FAT32 has a 2TB limit. If you provided info on your operating system(32 or 64 bit), hard drive format (NTFS, FAT32 etc.) I could be more specific.