Western Digital 4TB showing 1.3TB space

WD Internal Drives Internal Drives
1

Hi,

We are using an Western Digital 4TB Blue as an external hard disk. At some point the HDD is only showing 1,3TB of space.

We already tried to clean the disk with DiskPart, also tried with Paragon Partition Manager. But it keeps displaying only 1.3 TB.

Is this an error on the disk an can this be fixed?

Best regards,
Joost Lauwen

1 Like
2

The problem can be three causes:

  • Use a SATA box (Instead of SATA III)
  • You do not have the latest version of Intel® Rapid (Intel® RST) installed
  • You use MBR (Master Boot Record) instead of GPT

Note; MBR disk can only support 2TB hard drive

Look at the SATA cable, it must be SATA III, also the “Docking Station” or USB Box, it must be SATA III compatible

If you connect the Direct HDD to the motherboard or a modern box, you solve the problem.

— EDIT ----

That happens, when a disk is formatted, problem with SATA version.

I have done the test with one of the Disks and it happens the same.

When I connect it directly to SATA III or modern Box, it detects all TBs.

And if the hardware is not updated, it does not matter what software you use, always.

Indeed it is normal that before formatting, it will show you all the gigabytes.

How do you have the hard drive connected?

In case it is direct to the plate, which model?

The sata cable, you can send us a photo where the letters are seen.

In general, all the photos you can, to see how you have it connected and with what

3

Looks like the HDD box is obsolete and does not support larger hard disks. I have seen this problem a lot.

Low cost USB docks are available in fleabay cheap, these can allow a disk to be swapped easily too

4

What does CrystalDiskInfo report?

5

@fzabkar

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image678Ă—691 44.2 KB

@Vegan: It worked before and the disk was showing the remaining disk space. After formatting it only showed 1.3TB.

7

open an elevated command prompt

diskpart
show disks
select disk x
clean
exit

the reboot the machine and try Windows disk manager and see if it will partition properly

8

Hi Guys,

Thank you for your answer. I found out that the USB-dockingstation was the limitation.
Also the disk was Seagate, but the USB-device was a Western Digital.

Best regards,
Joost Lauwen

9

It has been a pleasure.
I know that the information provided has solved the problem.

10

As you have already discovered, the USB-SATA bridge firmware has a 32-bit LBA limit.

https://ipv4.google.com/search?q=8TB±+6TiB+in+TiB

8TB - 6TiB = 1.28 tebibytes