Windows 7 Why can't I access 746Gb on my hard drive after partitioning?

jamesy3000

New Member
Hi, I just partitioned my external 3.0Tb hard drive using the device manager in Win 7. At first I had one partition of around 2.8Tb, I shrunk the existing partition to around 1.9Tb and then Windows created 3 partitions instead of 2. I ended up with 1 partition of 1.9Tb, 1 partition unallocated of around 100Gb and a 3rd partition of 746Gb unallocated. I was then able to create a simple volume on the 100Gb partition which left me with the 746Gb partition unallocated. When I try to format the 746Gb partition all the options are greyed out - I cannot create a simple volume or delete the partition. I also cannot extend my other 2 partitions to use the unallocated space. When I delete the 100Gb partition I can then extend the 1.9Tb partition and end up with a 2Tb partition and the remaining 746Gb unallocated.

Is there any way to recover the 746Gb of unallocated space? Seems a waste to have a 3Tb drive that only has 2Tb of useable space.
 
Drives over 2T meed to be formatted GPT instead of MRB. I don't know it Windows will do that or you need a third party tool. EaseUS has a free one that should work.
Joe
 
If you can't do it in Disk Management (left end, right click), you can always use DiskPart. My drives are GPT, but converting the drive will probably loose any data stored.
 
Cheers for the info guys, I downloaded EaseUS as suggested and converted my drive back to GPT. Now I have my 3Tb drive working again.

The reason I was trying to partition it in the first place is that I have a Netgear media centre that doesn't recognise my new hard drive for some reason and I thought it may have been an issue with it being 3Tb. I've since managed to partition it in GPT into two 1.5Tb drives but it still won't recognise it. I'm thinking it must be an issue with GPT as it has no probs connecting to my other external 1.5Tb drive that is in MRB. Looks like my choices at the moment are to either use the 3Tb drive for storage and buy a smaller than 2Tb drive for connecting to the media centre or put my 3Tb drive into MRB and sacrifice the 746Gb of unallocated space but at least it will connect to my media centre.

Any ideas what else I could try to get my hard drive to play nice with my media centre?
 
I would think you need to go to Netgear for a good answer. It might take some type of driver, or firmware update.

But for now, what model is it?
 
It may be the Netgear. Some of the things like video, PS3 and network equipment only handle the MRB drives. So 3T drives don't work. I don't know what make your external is but WD has a format tool that makes the 3T drive work on XP 32 bit. It manipulates things somehow. Maybe you need something like that
Joe
 
It's a Netgear EVA2000 digital entertainer live. I've asked the question on the Netgear forums but havent had any replies. My hard drive is a seagate external, I might try seagate and see what they've got in the way of useful software. It's funny that Netgear fail to mention in their literature that there media centre is limited to 2Tb, seems like an important detail they've conveniently left out.
Thanks for your assistance BTW, I know this is a windows 7 forum and probably not the place to be seeking help with my media centre issues. Just thought I'd see if anyone had come across this issue themselves. Cheers
 
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