Can I upgrade 1TB G-Drive to 3TB?

I have a 1TB, Gen 4, G-Drive from 2009, that has failed. I thought I might replace that drive with a new 3TB drive, however when I try to format it, it will only format to 1TB. Is there a workaround for this?

I am running on Mac OS 10.10.5 Yosemite.

I’m not a G-Tech expert yet (I’m from the WD side of the company), so if there is an issue specific to this drive (I don’t think there is) hopefully someone more knowledgeable will pop in here and say something…

That being said, [based on my own personal research] there were issues formatting drives (of any make/model/manufacturer) in some circumstances under Yosemite.

If you have access to another computer (ideally with a different version of OSX) I would try formatting there than bringing the drive back to the original.

You may also want to try formatting in terminal which apparently has a better success rate if you are experiencing a similar issue to one of the ones I read about. After launching terminal from OSX, type the following:

> diskutil list
> diskutil unmount /dev/disk22
> diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ “Macintosh HD” /dev/disk22

The items in bold/italics will be specific to your drive (You’ll get the values from the “list” command)

MAKE SURE YOU ARE FORMATTING THE G-DRIVE AND NOT YOUR INTERNAL HD

EDIT: @Rydia provided a drive-specific answer below .

That generation of G-Drive was made prior to the chipset that allowed >2TB drive capacities. Since the drive is a 3TB it will not be able to read the full capacity in that enclosure.