New 3TB WD30EZRX shows up as two 2.72TB "partitions" in Windows 7 SP1

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Help.

I have several older WD SATA drives (under 2TB) docked in USB docking ports on my Windows 7 SP1 system; no issues with any of the drives.  I purchased a new 3TB WD30EZRX 64MB cache drive and docked it into a new USB docking port.  I used the Computer/Manage/Disk Management feature in Windows 7 to review the drive, format and assign a drive letter.  To my surprise, two “partitions” showed up in the Disk Management listing and they are both sized at 2.72TB.

I am not using either of these “partitions” until I understand how one 3TB physical hard drive could result in two “partitions” of 2.72TB each.  I am able to copy files into each of the “partitions”.

Do I need to format this drive myself into more than one partition?

Thanks in advance for any assistance (and educating me on these >2TB drives).

2

Hi, I don’t see how that could happen, it should be a 2TB and 720GB partition. From the disk management window, if you right click on one of them, do you see the option to delete partition? If you have problems to create a single partition with all the available space, check the link below and select the option to format it on GPT mode. 

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1018/session/L3RpbWUvMTM1NDQ3Mjg2MS9zaWQveFZpRXVMY2w%3D

3

Many USB SATA docks don’t understand GPT disks.   Happens all the time.  Check with the vendor of your dock.