Desktops & All-In-Ones

[kpet2786]

I have 2x 3TB hard drives that I'm trying to make work in my Acer Veriton M498G Desktop.

I've checked BIOS, it's version 08.00.15, release date 11/25/10, ROM ID R28000012.

Intel Rapid Storage Technology 9.5.0.1037 reports the drives as 2862GB.  It cannot create a volume, however, failing with "unknown error."

Win7 Pro Disk Management Utility reports the drives as 746.39GB HDD.

What else could be preventing success here?  What other information can I provide to help troubleshoot?

[Clyde]

What types of drives are you installing?

Do the drives work if you just install one?

[kpet2786]

Both drives are Western Digital 3TB Red NAS WD30EFRX.  No matter whether they're installed individually or together, they show up in OS as 746.39GB.

[Clyde]

Do you have another system you can try the drives in? It is odd that they would show up, but only recognize part of the drive.

Have you tried formatting them and partitioning them?

Have you contacted the manufacturer of the hard drives to see if they have ever heard of this before? Maybe they have a fix.

[kpet2786 · Accepted solution]

It looks like a BIOS problem in my motherboard.  Apparently drives over 2TB require extended BIOS type, and cannot be supoprted by this motherboard.

I purchased a PCI SATA card that supports larger drives, now the problem is solved.

[Acer-Fletcher]

Hello kpet2786,

To answer your question about the 2X3TB problem. First of all, your running Windows 7 using the MBR formatting module. Even with you updating the Intel Rapid Storage Technology 9.5.0.1037, this scheme has many shortcomings including partitions being limited to 2TB [terabytes] in size. These two work hand and hand [operating system and BIOS].

LINK: http://www.petri.co.il/gpt-vs-mbr-based-disks.htm