Problem re-partitioning 3TB My Book Essential

New to this forum, I’ve trawled for an answer to this problem - apologies if it’s already been raised.  Am running W7 64-bit Pro and wanted to split my new drive’s single partition of 2794.49 GB into two partitions.  Using W7 Disk Management, I deleted the single volume and was surprised to see two unallocated partitions appear, of 2048 GB and 746.49 GB.  I can format the 2048 GB partition OK, but all options for creating a new volume in the smaller partition are greyed out.  How do I get round this?  I’d be pretty miffed to have nearly 750 GB unusable!  TIA.

Try this I see it recomended a lot  http://www.partition-tool.com/download.htm See if you can delete all the partitions and volumes.

Joe

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Thanks for the pointer Joe.  Looks like a good tool and I have installed it for possible use elsewhere, but it won’t help my current problem as it says it supports disk drives up to 2 TB only.  Am I going to be forced down the WD Technical Support route? :cry:

Can you create one partition on the disk then shrink that one to size you want. Then merge the unaccocated space with the small one showing up? It’s hard without actually seeing the screen. Formatting isn’t something most of us do very often anyway.

Joe

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Thanks again Joe - appreciate your attention and suggestions.  This is not something I do very often either :angry:   However. I’ve dug into the topic and now understand more about MBRs and GPTs and the 2 TB limit.  I have solved the problem by deleting the 2TB partition to give me a totally unallocated disk, then in Disk Management right-clicked the disk descriptor box (e.g. labelled “Disk 3 Basic 2794.36 GB Online”) and selected “Convert to GPT Disk”.  Having done that I was able to create two partitions of equal size with no more than the usual amount of wasted space :wink:

Actually, the link below was one of the signposts on my path to enlightenment, which I may have found elsewhere in this forum (it’s so easy to get lost in browser tabs)

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2010/02/18/understanding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage.aspx

Cheers

Jukebox

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Thanks for posting back with the link. I’m sure it will help others.

Joe

when I do delete volume from 2TB partion it remains as 2TB unallocated partition and does not merge with 740gb unallocated partition. since there are two partitions convert GPT option does not appear. how do I merge them to a single unallocated partition?

thanks

mv

Is there a volume to delete for the unallocated space?

Joe

there is no volume to delete

mv