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Extending a 3 Tb Drive

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I have two identical 3 Terabyte drives. One has been sitting in my desktop PC for years, having been extended successfully extended by Acronis 2012. The second drive now resides in an external enclosure that claims to accommodate up to 4 Tb. I can PnP this drive and format and partition to my hearts content up to two Tb, but it always leaves (I think) 768 Meg free. I believe this is due to the Windows legacy issue. I tried Acronis drive extender, but apparently I am missing a step or fouling a step (despite getting a dialogue that all is fine after the extension), because that 700-some Meg allocation WILL NOT connect with the 2 gig I have otherwise. Due to the age of this software (gotta LOVE mandatory updates) Acronis won't say a damn thing about it. I have tried this on two machines; one AMD and one INTEL. Two Windows 7, One Windows 8. No Dice.

Might / Could someone perhaps give a step-by-step to this process please?
I have spent hours on this, and imagine it is a very simple issue nonetheless.

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What version of Windows 7 are you running on your machine or do you have access to? Do you have a Win 7 install disk and if so what version?

Have you heard of or are you familiar with the Windows developer Diskpart utility?

You can use the diskpart command to perform a clean wipe of the drive which will eliminate all data and formatting on the drive giving you a clean slate with which to work. You can also use the diskpart command to format the newly clean disk. This should give you all available space less normal formatting space on the drive.

You must be very careful when using the diskpart command as once started it is very destructive and can render a system unusable.

Here is a link to a complete rundown on the diskpart utility. It can be run under certain installs of Windows 7 versions and certain Windows install disks from an admin command prompt. The Clean and Format functions of the utility should do the trick but read the instructions on using this tool thoroughly before you start.

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/300415

Thanks Enchantech!

I tried what I could but found myself with those same two partitions / unallocated areas again.
I am on Windows 7 Pro to answer your question.
When using the Acronis disk extender, shouldn't it take the smaller unallocated space and "paste" it onto the other 2T to make a 2.7T disk? I believe that's how it worked the first time I used it. Just one operation.

Thanks again.

!Alex

Alex,

Sorry for late reply. I suspect that your external enclosure while able to address up to 4TB does not handle aadvanced format drives correctly and thus is leaving the free space to make up for that deficiency.

Okay Enchantech, thanks for the update.
But what does that mean and can it be fixed? This was a 40$$ enclosure that I can not return.
Can I plug the drive directly into my PC, and check that way? And then maybe return it to the enclosure?

Thanks mate;
!Alex

Note: Windows Explorer nor EaseUS Partition Master 10.0 sees the drive any longer, although the Device Manager sees a USB device under disk drives sporadically. Yet DiskPart doesn't see it at all.

Note: Windows Explorer nor EaseUS Partition Master 10.0 sees the drive any longer, although the Device Manager sees a USB device under disk drives sporadically. Yet DiskPart doesn't see it at all.

OKay untitled_presentation.jpg is what partition manager has managed to see.

The disk of interest is disk 4.

untitled_presentation(1).jpg is what diskpart sees. Disk 3 being of interest. Note the missing 750 +- Meg Free from Size.

Apologiees for the many many posts; I know it's bad form, but things do develop.

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