[04rex]

Hey guys, I recently bought a 4TB Seagate harddrive to build my HTPC. For now it is my main and only drive. I installed the harddrive and Windows on it. When I go into my computer however, it says that it is only 2TB. All that is installed on the harddrive is Windows and nothing else.

How can I fix this so that it is at 4TB at it should be? I know it will never be at 4TB as there is always a bit less, but you get what I mean. I definitely don't want half.

Any input is greatly appreciated. Dark_Slayer did give me a suggestion, which I greatly appreciate, but I am wondering if anyone else has had this issue and what they did. I absolutely do not mind re-installing Windows as it is all new, if need be.

Is it the harddrive, is it the way I installed Windows?? Should I get a new one?? If I get a new one would I have the same problem?

Thanks again!

 

[Ken.F]

See: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/beyond-2tb/

 

[aliaskary77]

please see here: http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2581408

 

[04rex]

Tried both, still nothing. Same thing.

 

[jondak]

Did you format it as gpt? If you chose mbr you have to go to disk manager and set up an additional partition.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

 

[Dark_Slayer]

Did you format it as gpt? If you chose mbr you have to go to disk manager and set up an additional partition.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

The OS is installed on the disk. Windows typically does mbr by default and can be tricky to get it to accept gpt when you allow it to create partitions during the install

The simplest answer is still to just add a volume to the unallocated partition and call it a day

The longer answer will probably be first to burn a bootable CD with Gparted Live and boot that to wipe away your windows install and mbr partitioning scheme from that disk. Gparted should then let you initialize the disk as GPT. After all that you'd have to install windows, but likely you'll need to be strict on what it installs and not allow it to "create it's own partitions"

You could also buy a cheap SSD to install windows on and it will be a much better, faster, more elegant experience. I have an used 128GB vertex4 Seriously, and there are tons of ssd deals daily

@ajhieb, @Foxbat121, you guys come to mind when I think of troubleshooting windows installs (sorry, a lot of the rest of you around here come to mind as well, but I'm not going to list the whole forum ). Is there anything more specific that can be done to convert an existing mbr install to gpt? Or any gotchas after starting the install over with an already GPT initialized disk?

 

[MrBobb]

Be sure to update your Mobo's BIOS.

If Mobo's maker don't have an update, find out what SATA chip is on the board and go to that vendor website and look for a driver update for that chip.

 

[04rex]

Ok, so lets say i add a partition, so now essentially the harddrive is in half. If i install XBMC and i have more data than 1 of the partitions, how does that work?

To make it a bit clearer, on my primary partition, i have all my programs, XBMC etc. I also have my movies for XBMC. The primary partition gets full, so i put movies on the other partition. How does XBMC know to look at both partitions for movies, or music or whatever?

 

[Dark_Slayer]

Play around with XBMC for a little bit and the answer will be obvious If you've hidden "Videos" from the main screen you need to add it back.

Go to Videos->Files->YourExistingMoviesSource (the same place you'd need to go to "Add Source" the first time around)
When you see the existing source (Movies, TV Shows, Music, etc) press "C" on the keyboard to bring up the context menu and choose 'Edit Source'

In the edit source menu you should have the path for your library, now go to the right side of that window and choose "Add"
With your remote or keyboard, make sure the source is highlighted then select "Browse" on the right. Choose the additional folder on the 2nd drive and click OK. XBMC will ask if you would like to refresh for all items in that path. If it's empty it will finish quickly. Everything you add (to either location) will get picked up with a single "Update Library" command

 

[04rex]

Ok, ok. So if i do what you said, then essentially XBMC will see it as 1 drive essentially and always look at both partitions and update accordingly?

Also, last question (i think) what is the easiest and most effective way of setting up the other partition?

Thank you for all your help Dark_Slayer. I really appreciate it!!

 

[LowTech1]

04Rex.. Get an SSD drive,put your operating system on that and use the 4 tb drive for everything else. Your computer will be much more snappy also.

 

[ajhieb]

@ajhieb, @Foxbat121, you guys come to mind when I think of troubleshooting windows installs (sorry, a lot of the rest of you around here come to mind as well, but I'm not going to list the whole forum ). Is there anything more specific that can be done to convert an existing mbr install to gpt? Or any gotchas after starting the install over with an already GPT initialized disk?

To be honest I haven't tried converting a Win install from mbr to gpt. As nearly everything I'm working on these days is either on an SSD or is a "disposable" install, I haven't had much need to look into it.

To weigh in on the issue as a whole, I'd say if OP's budget allows, installing windows on an SSD, and storing movies on the 4tb drive would probably be the best all around solution, but if he's determined to make it work as is, I wouldn't bother with trying to repartition and/or reinstall. Just making a 2nd partition and configuring your media software accordingly is a far easier solution.

On a barely related side note, I generally limit my system partition to 120GB so I can used Disk2VHD to archive my system partitions and relegate them to the VM world when the time comes.

 

[04rex]

I will get an SSD eventually, but $$ is short right now. I am gonna do the partition thing for now though. Thanks guys!!

 

[Dark_Slayer]

Similar instructions as I posted back in the other thread. Go to windows disk management and right click the unallocated area, then select new simple volume

 

[04rex]

Thanks man. No more questions for me. lol . Thanks again

 

[ES_Revenge]

Glad you got it sorted.


Just a note I'm not sure was mentioned directly... AFAIK you can only boot a GPT partition if your board has UEFI and you do a UEFI Windows install with 64-bit Windows. Therefore if your board doesn't have UEFI or you don't do a UEFI install or you don't have 64-bit Windows, you won't get that drive to work as a 4TB GPT drive while having Windows boot from it. In this case you'll be stuck with a maximum of only 2.2TB or having to use a different drive as a boot drive.

 

[StardogChampion]

If you did want to reinstall and use the whole 4TB, it can be done from the Windows installer.

Before you get to the screen in the Windows install where it asks you if you want "Upgrade" or "Custom" hit Shift+F10 and it'll open a command prompt.

Type "diskpart" and hit return. Wait for diskpart to start.
Type "list disk" and hit return. Take note of which disk is your 4TB disk.
Type "select disk n" where n is your disk number and hit return.

To properly set up the disk as GPT you want to issue the following commands (> is the prompt)

> clean
> convert gpt
> exit

Then exit out of the command prompt and choose the "Custom" menu for the new Windows install. Select the unallocated space on your 4TB as the place to install Windows. The installer will do the rest.

See https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn336946.aspx under "Manually wipe a drive and convert it to GPT"

 

[Dark_Slayer]

Thanks stardog, couldn't recall that specific set of instructions

For single HDD installs it's still kind of recommended to separate your OS and data anyway ~ if the disk fails you still lose everything but if you hose the OS in some way it's easier to reinstall. That being said, I've not had the need to totally reinstall an OS in quite some time, and for just an HTPC that "hosing your install" set of recommendations becomes even more scarce because it's not too common that we tinker the crap out of the OS after getting all of our software up and running (though we do tinker with the software a lot, I've not had that necessitate a clean install for me yet)

 

[TornadoTJ]

I set up a PC on a 4TB drive about a year ago, and trying to put Windows on that single 4TB drive was such a pain that I just put an SSD in it and called it a day. You can get SSDs for under $50 now.

But I also noticed you wanted to run XBMC, you could use OpenELEC and boot from a USB thumb drive if XBMC is all you need. You may have a reason to run Windows, but I wanted to throw that out there as another option. If I were doing it again on that other HTPC I was working on, I'd do OpenELEC and be done with it.

 

[Dark_Slayer]

If using open elec and you set the drive up as gpt from some other windows box and copy a folder directory to it open elec will auto mount that for you and it will be sharable in your network as well, so if you have any other computers they could rip your future media to OE across the lan