OT: One of my discs just shrunk!
Peter Wade
Posts: 1,682
I've been having problems with the 4 TByte data disc in my desktop for a while, it kept needing a check when I started the computer and somtimes took nearly an hour to do it. I finally decided to try re-formatting it to see if this would fix it. The re-format appeared to work, but then the disc suddenly dissapeared from Windows. A restart didn't bring it back, disc management showed it but said I had to initialise it. I chose the option recommended for drives more than 2 TByte. Then I had to create a volume but Windows will only let me create one about 1.63 TBytes, and disk management shows this as completly filling the disc. So about half of my 4TByte disc has vanished!
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Go to the manufacturers website and see if they have their own tools for error checking and repair plus formatting.
Last time I had your issue, my HDD was close to dying.
I'll have to open up the computer to look at it, I can't remember what make it is. The disc isn't all that old, maybe two or three years.
Sounds like the drive hit the end of it's life and needs to be replaced
Either that or it's just dehydrated and you need to leave it sit in water overnight
4TB disks are not old enough to break so soon. Return it to the manufacturer for a replacement
How long ago did you purchase it? I may still be under warranty.
It's a Western Digital. I bought it from Maplin but of course I can't find the receipt. The drive has a date of 24 Feb 2014 on it which must be when they made it,
I downloaded their diagnostic, the quick check says it is 4TByte and it's OK. The extended test estimates it will take around 9 hours so I haven't run it yet.
I had a look at the PC's BIOS settings to see if there is anything you have to switch on there but I can't find it. If I look at the drives in the BIOS screen it shows this one as 1.8 TByte. I know that 2TBytes is a special value but it does show my 3 TByte Linux drive with it's correct value.
I don't know if this a fault on the drive or some sort of disagreement between the PC and the drive, but the PC was using this as a 4TByte drive until recently. After I took it out I put it back in a different drive slot (this PC has got 6 of them) but that didin't make any difference.
I've always had problems with WD drives crapping out on me. I never use them anymore.
Whereas I've never had a problem - one of the 1 tb drives in this system is sitting at 75,000 powered on hours, and is still going strong.
Google: 4tb only seen as 1.6tb
A lot of WDs drives including some of the newer Red NAS drives are suffering from the infamous Load/Unload Cycle (head parking every few seconds ) problem, meaning that the drives can hit the max number of Load/Unload Cycles (usually 2-600.000 depending on the drive type) in a few months if the drive is running constantly. They have a tool where you can change the setting, I always check the drives and change the setting if it's too low. There's been a lot of talk about it (just search on "WD head parking", 591.000 hits on google) but WD seem to keep quiet about it. Here's one of the more informative threads:
https://community.netgear.com/t5/ReadyNAS-Hardware-Compatibility/WD-Red-drives-park-their-heads-like-WD-Green-drives/td-p/869565
Here's an example of two drives of the same type I've purchased, the oldest one has the problem (which I discovered quite late because I forgot to check the drive), while the newer one doesn't. With the one with the problem the cycle count has increased from 94.000 to 112.000 in just 16 days, with the other only from 3.540 to 4.550 in 2+ years.
Same here. Never had a problem with a WD OR a Seagate drive *knock wood* Best HD I ever had tho was a Hitachi Deskstar. 9 years old and SMART is still showing as good ;). Great little drive.
Laurie
Never has a single problem with them and I've had a lot of computers and have added dozens of drives to different computers. You just have to be aware of which version (Green, Blue, Black, ect). You need the one to match your needs.
I've had ONE bad Western Digital drive in 20 years. I've also have a total of three drive failures in that time, though, so that's not saying much.
I tried searching for 4 TByte drive shown as 2 TByte. I mostly got pages telling me to use GPT which I am already doing, and to install drivers for Intel Rapid Storage. I checked the Dell website and found there was a more recent Rapid Storage driver but installing that didn't fix it. I tried your suggestion but didn't find anything useful,
If I can't find any solution soon I'll just use it as a 2 TByte drive but make sure anything I want to keep is backed up somewhere else. Ah, computers, don't you love them
Something I just remembered from once when I was researching system maintenance — are you sure the initialisation option you chose wasn't for a system drive, so it reserved a "hidden" partition for housekeeping things like system backups? Not sure if modern systems with modern typical HD sizes still do the same, it's been a while since I read that (might even have been way back when I was still running WinXP). IIRC only the normally visible partition is counted for "unused drive size" unless you unhide the other partition. Can't remember if this function reserved a set partition size or a preset percentage of the total drive capacity (see above about modern typical HD sizes).
I had a similar issue where I reformatted a 3TB and it would only recognize 768MB and found similar discussions on my situation 3TB seen as 768MB, but no solution in those threads... so I pulled the drive into storage. One day I had a DATA drive go out and decided to use the 3TB as a 768MB. I had the free version of EasUS Partition Master installed on that computer (to repartition with live data on the drive!) and I was able to get the 3TB drive back. I don't remember the steps exactly, but it was probably the steps to reinitialize and repartition. I didn't read any of the program's documentation, once I launched it, it's usage was very similar to Windows Disk Manager. In my situation the drive was empty, so I had nothing to "lose" data-wise.
I didn't make this one a system drive. My boot drive has got two extra partitions, one hidden and one not hidden but they only add up to about 550 MBytes.
Which needs do each type support?
This was before the color types I believe. In fact, when I had most of my WD drive failures, dial up was still widely used and 1TB drives weren't that common (If they were even out yet at all)
I had stacks of drives I would salvage from upgrades, computers people were getting rid of, etc. and of all the drives, it seemed only the WD drives would crap out on me so I gave up on them and stayed away until I gave them a 2nd chance back in 2005ish when I ended up with a WD drive (can't remember the size) with a good amount of space for a good price. Only later to find out (after it was too late and my drive died) that there was a firmware bug with that particular model that made the drive go bad when it happen to hit a certain cycle number or some such thing.
That was the last WD drive I have ever owned and I will not own another.
Same here. Horrible failure rate.
What's your rate? I think mine has been 1/8 or less during the first three years of disk life, and some of these were replaced under warranty. None of the last 12 I've purchased (all over 1 year old now) have failed yet.
But I've used WD only for over 15 years now so I have nothing to compare with.
https://www.wdc.com/en-ie/products/internal-storage.html
Nice advertisising but what does "build in in blue and create in black" actually mean? If I want to build a PC and use it to create art, which do I need? My drive is green and this page doesn't even mention it.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q1-2015/
These guys are good at publishing their results from their throughput of hard dives. And they update them now and then; no idea if the one I link is the most recent. Makes for interesting reading (or I thought so).
Not a help to solving your problem, but perhaps it will help when chosing your next.
Try chkdsk and see if that solves it.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-2232371/windows-recogning-full-hard-drive-space.html
chkdsk shows it as 1.6 TBytes, I'm pretty sure it only looks at the volume created on the drive. diskpart does look at the entire drive and this also shows it as 1.6TBytes.
When you formatted it I assume you used the right file system? Also if you are only seeing 1.76Gb then that is the limit for a 32 bit system.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r30769114-Boot-hdd-upgrade-replacement-over-2tb-4tb-not-being-recognized
I formatted it as NTFS which can go above 2 TBytes. The problem is that the computer is seeing the disc as only 2TB. If you look at it in disc management it shows the disc and the volumes on it. You have to create a volume and then format it. You can have more than one volume on a physical disc, each volume appears as a seperate drive with it'sown drive letter in Windows. But disc management only shows this as a 2 TByte drive and only lets me create one 2 TByte volume on it.
Just out of desperation I decided to boot this PC in Linux and see what that would make of it. I didn't expect very much but would you believe it? Linux sees this disc as 4 TBytes! It told me not all of the avaialble size was being used and would I like to use GPT to fix this? I said yes, although I'd set it up as GPT in Windows so I don't know why that didn't work
I created a maximum size volume on it, 3.63 TBytes allowing for file system overheads, formatted in NTFS (Linux can create NTFS partitions now). Then back to Windows. Windows now sees this as a 4 TByte disc with 3.63 TByte volume on it.
I don't know what to make of this, apart from the fact that a Linux live boot DVD is an essential maintennance tool for Windows installations. I'll start using the disc again but cautiously, making sure ther are no important files on it that aren't backed up somewhere else in case Windows changes it's mind again.
If its a WD Green, back up you data and replace the disk ASAP.
One of these (2TB) died on me already and the second one I own is dying right now - I'm trying to back up the data for three days now, it's verrry slow and unreadable sectors were found already...
As someone mentioned, they park the read/write heads way too often, mechanical failures are the result. I think it got better with the later Green drives, but I would not make a gamble out of it (which I actually did with my second drive *sigh*)...
Reading the SMART data of the disk is a very good idea, which someone has mentioned already. Just be aware: I had disks dying while having perfect SMART conditions. It's a safety net, but you should not rely on it too much. But still a good idea to check it from time to time.
These are general advices, the actual error might be somewhere else. But replacing an old WD Green is always a good idea, if you ask me. :)
On Linux you need smartctl for this.
sudo apt-get install smartctl
sudo smartctl -A /dev/YOURDISK (YOURDISK likely being sda, sdb or sdc)