Wrong 2.5 TB Finder Size

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Hi guys,

i just bought WD25EZRX 2,5 TB. I connected to my iMac. I can see the disk but it is only 350 GB. Why is that?

I read that kind of problems “Disk Largers than 2 TB” happened with PC because BIOS drivers and OS limitations but no with Macs. I have an iMac Late 2006 by the way.

Any help or ideas?

Thanks,

2

See if there is an update for your Mac and the larger size drives. That’s old for a computer using new hardware. Drives available to consumers weren’t that big when you got your Mac. Find your drive and look in downloads and see if WD has a format tool for it. You can check this out too http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3865 partitioning/formatting isn’t something most of us do very often.

Joe

1 Like
3

Joe,

thanks for the fast reply and your help.

I did everything you say but the problem continues.

  1. I checked the Internet and Mac does not have any upgrade driver for larger size drives like PC. My OS is up today.

  2. I check my WD model driver download

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?modelno=WD25EZRX&x=11&y=7

and there is no driver for Mac.

The only note is that Mac OSX 10.6.x (Snow Leopard) disks should be Formatted as GUI partition style. I did that and still see 300 GB in my 2,5 TB disk.

Mac are supposed to see disks right away without having to go to upgrades and drivers like PC. Indeed i have another 2 TB disk and i never had a problem before.

Any other ideas?

Thanks and cheers,

4

Joe,

You can see the pictures of my Disk Internal data at

DISK CONFIGURATION

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1jhx8pyxsqiu6N9hEdgG4aBIcSURGB1

ACTUAL DISK

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1XCRDhfZLbgc4YMcNe1EFEfYFWj01

Thanks,

5

I just called Western Digital Customer Service. They told me to connect the Disk to a PC and an application called “data lifeguard diagnostics” to write zeros to fully erase the disk. If the disk is not really damaged it will recover its 2,5 TB, if not i should returned to the dealer.

Thanks again,

6

do you need to recover any data??

if so the process of writing zeros to the hole drive will destroy the data

be carefull, plug the drive to a PC and see if it recoznizes properly and works well, if not return it because now we are confident that HDD is the cullprit :wink:

1 Like
7

Hi David,

thank you for the very useful information.

The disk was brand new and did not have any data at all yet. So there is no problem for a full erase now.

Now that you say, which is very interesting when i connect the disk to the PC it see it as a 350 GB and not 2,5 TB as it should. I guess you are right the HDD might be the problem.

Nevertheless, i am doing the full erase which take 35 HOURS!!! to complete to be 100% sure i cannot save the disk.

Thanks again,

8

install Partition Manager Software ( for free) realy great software for free… believe me

in

http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm and see if it apears only 350GB or… 350 GB partitioned and the rest without partition

if it only apears 350 GB with nothing plz connect your drive to a friends computer to confirm that the drive is recognized the same as yours

Maybe your motherboard only supports 2TB maximum disk size… i didnt remenber that until now… 

1 Like
9

Hi David,

Thanks again for the good tip!

It only appears 350 GB…nothing else. Now one WD support told me those large HD need to be first formatted as internal disk and not with external USB cases. It seems that is a common problem.

That is quite an issue for an iMac user. Open an iMac is quite a challenge. Technical support would like to help and take the disk to them to a internal format so my iMac can see it. I keep my finger crossed.

I will let you know and thanks again for your help!

10

no problem we are here to help :stuck_out_tongue:

say something after

11

uzapuca wrote:

Hi David,

 

Thanks again for the good tip!

It only appears 350 GB…nothing else. Now one WD support told me those large HD need to be first formatted as internal disk and not with external USB cases. It seems that is a common problem.

 

That is quite an issue for an iMac user. Open an iMac is quite a challenge. Technical support would like to help and take the disk to them to a internal format so my iMac can see it. I keep my finger crossed.

 

I will let you know and thanks again for your help!

 I know it sounds to much of a coincidence but, did you check if the PC supports drives with this capacity? o.o

Formatting on an enclosure, regardless of the limitations, should still allow you to reformat the drive using the full capacity on the PC.

1 Like
12

I don’t know about Macs but  in Windows drives larger than 2T need to be formatted GPT not MRB. I don’t know if the same applies to Macs. And XP 32 bit does not support drives larger that 2T but the WD formatter does something to make it work. Maybe a third party format tool is needed.

Joe

1 Like
13

Today, i went to company which sold me the WD HDD. The IT  formatted the disk in NTFS with some software they have and now the HDD runs great on my iMac now. I don’t know what the problem was. By the way, the first external case was broken…but my second case was right and failed to detected the full 2,5 TB either.

Thanks everybody for their help.

Cheers,

14

Hi folks,

unfortunately I have to tell you, that I’m THAT dissapointet by WD, the drive and the support hotline (Europe / Germany). I’ve exactly the same problem as the threadstarter. Even my Snow Leopard shows the same size of the drive (301,47GB) which should be 2.5 TB of course. I tried everything to get the drive working at the right size (i.e. connected (FW400, FW800, USB 2.0, eSata ) internal and external at PC, external at iMac / Snow Leopard) downloaded the WD diagnosis software (it says the disc is “ok”). Just when I stuck the drive into an old G4 Sawtooth, the drive was recognized and formatted correctly at somewhat of 2.3 TB. But putting it back to the iMac or the PC, I’ve got the same old 301.47 GB respectively 280 GB on Win7. In OS X it says the drive was not recognized and is formatting it again.

After all this mess I sent back the drive and ordered a new one, same breed, and - surprise surprise - same old story. So WD tell me, IS there ANYBODY in your company which is able and willing to help me out here? All I want is a working drive on the right size. I first hand was delighted how muted and smooth this drive was, but am bitterly crestfallen about it.

Alas the threadstarter could not tell how the IT techs at his dealer made it working, but I simply can not believe that there’s nobody at WD which can help here. And please don’t tell me to contact support hotline, the guy was nice but at the end recommendet to send back the drive.

I look forward to your reply which is highly appreciated.

–oxenfrog

15

I’m facing the same problem on a PC laptop, only it sees 280GB after I initialize in Win7. Have you found a solution to this problem? I have 2TB drives acting a backup usb drives and they installed fine. Assuming it has something to do with the OS and driver interaction with the addressing limits on MBR but it shouldn’t be an issue as I selected GPT in initalizing… Has anyone installed a new (unformatted) WD25EZRS into Win7 (64bit) through usb? And if so what were your precise steps? It might help clairfy for both myself and those on Macs what’s going wrong.

JBOP

16

Bad WD25EZRS driver and then checking the setup through a usb port replicator. Direct connect to a laptop and reinstall of WD25EZRS driver initialize, partition and (quick) format appearantly went fine. Windows 7 (64bit) now reports 2.27 TB on drive (Media) M:.

On MBP OS X running 10.6.8 with NTFS - 3G the dive is not seen (a warning: unforamtted drive) and Bootcamp 4 Win 7 Pro sees the drive as (Media) D: but cannot access it.

Looks like a support issue with OS X and Bootcamp support. Has anyone successfully installed a larger than 2TB HDD on their Mac Pro, MBP or Mini’s?

17

…hmmm, I don’t understand exactly the issue with OS X, do you think it has something to do with a possibly existing bootcamp partition? About the driver issue, for OS X there’s no driver available, is there one for Win7? There’s no such driver at WD’ support site: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=608&lang=en

–cheers, oxenfrog

18

Hi,

i just installed a new WD25ezrx into my late 2009 iMac (10.7.3) and i cannot access it with Disk Utility. It shows 0 byte. No other options are given. I cannot create a new partition. It is displayed as “MEDIA”.

WD Support contacted, but I think i will send it back…

Reg