UEFI & GPT Boot Problem

[AlainGr]

Peter, I have the same drive (Seagate ST4000DM000) and it was created and formatted as a "base disk"... Does this means that it is defined as MBR (as opposed to Dynamic disk) ?

Just to mention that my motherboard is from 2007 and does not have EFI nor UEFI in Bios... This PC being my "All purpose" PC on which that drive is connected through Esata (so external) and my PC is connected directly to my music PC through LAN.

Alain
Edit: if someone finds something that explains clearly how things are related (Basic vs Dynamic disks, GUID aka GPT vs MBR), maybe this would help us to have a good understanding about what is feasible and what is not...

[PeterSt]

Hi Alain,

I think it is all written out on that page you linked to yourself (I think you gave us that page) - the one with the downloads at the bottom. But something is fishey.

I think my usage of that DiscWizard didn't apply much else than making MBR of it, which I just did not try with the two partitions. I only tried GPT with that. So If I had made the MBR partitions myself I'm almost sure it will have worked too.
But why not this 4TB (particular ??) disk while other 3TBs work fine here ?
And this is not UEFI !

Let's remember, my experiences from today are not related to the booting, but if it does not work at all I'd say the booting won't work either.
And why I received that error at extending the partition (from 2TB + remainder to one 4TB) ? Because it now first requires an UEFI BIOS ?

Peter, I have the same drive (Seagate ST4000DM000) and it was created and formatted as a "base disk"... Does this means that it is defined as MBR (as opposed to Dynamic disk) ?

Yes.

maybe this would help us to have a good understanding about what is feasible and what is not...

It should just work, but maybe not with Seagate who always had special drivers for over 2TB disks.
but
This is a different subject than what I told about earlier : That I could find no way to let the (UEFI - that's true) system boot from a GPT partitioned disk. BUT ... W8. Just a 720GB disk. But this boot was special somehow, and I forgot how exactly. Anyway, making it MBR solved the problem.

Quite stupid that this all seems not easy (to grasp) .. you are correct.

Regards,
Peter

[Scroobius]

Peter - are you properly booted in EFI? i.e. are you booting from a GPT disc?. It sounds to me that you are not. I had similar problems until I properly booted into EFI i.e. I could boot from a GPT disc.

I have a 4T Seagate and there are (now) no problems I can have as many partitions as I want and copy anything over. I copied over my 2T music directory without problems.

To boot into EFI a W8 install DVD MUST be in the DVD drive (W7 is no good it has to be W8). When it is go into the UEFI ("BIOS") screen and look at the devices being offered to boot from. There will now be two offered for the internal DVD rewriter - one UEFI and the other the ordinary BIOS option - select the UEFI version. I forced a boot from this by removing all other options.

So then continue out of "BIOS" to the W8 install options. You need to let W8 format the HDD - there was something wrong because I was not able to find any way to set up more than one partition at that time. However, as it turned out it was not a problem because I continued with the OS install got everything working and then afterwards used the Windows tools to reduce the OS partition size to 100Gb and create a new 2nd partition of 3.7T.

Also even though I had already formatted the HDD as GPT W8 would not install onto it until I formatted the HDD from the W8 install disc.

Before I actually got the PC properly booted in EFI I had a number of problems with the 4T Seagate that sound similar to the ones you find.

Cheers

Paul

[Scroobius]

Hi Alain,

I have the same drive (Seagate ST4000DM000) and it was created and formatted as a "base disk"... Does this means that it is defined as MBR (as opposed to Dynamic disk) ?

Same disc for me and it was MBR. It needs to be GPT - but see above I had to let W8 (booted in EFI) format the disc to get it working.

Obviously I had to do a complete W8 install to get everything working but it was worth it because now no problems with the 4T disc. But also the network start stop with XX is completely seamless (i.e. not visible).

Cheers

Paul

[PeterSt]

Paul, thanks.

But do you already have more than 2.2TB on it ?
The general problem when it does not work is that all works until you pass that limit and reboot. So you can only be 100% sure all works when you crossed that limit and all still works after a reboot; and this reboot can be extended as long as you want, thus it last fairly long before you even notice all is corrupted. So, also nice.

I know, this is again another subject.
Regards,
Peter

[Scroobius]

I have 29Gb in the OS partition and 2.25T of music in the other partition. As it happens I rebooted earlier (for different reasons) without problems.

If I had seen your post before I rebooted maybe I would not have!!!!

So Peter are you booted into EFI? I thought 2.2T was only relevant in MBR and in MBR the 2.2T limit is overcome by special software "tricks".

Paul

[PeterSt]

Obviously I had to do a complete W8 install to get everything working but it was worth it because now no problems with the 4T disc. But also the network start stop with XX is completely seamless (i.e. not visible).

Paul, i hope this isn't going to be too confusing regarding the original subject, but do you have this seamlessly working for W7 as well on that same PC ? I mean, for my W8 (and UEFI machine !) this works for W8, but not for W7 (can take 30 seconds). Same "BIOS" of course ...
I thought this was a W7 issue, but if you have this OK for W7 as well then apparently it must be something else ...

Thanks,
Peter

[PeterSt]

Peter - are you properly booted in EFI? i.e. are you booting from a GPT disc?. It sounds to me that you are not. I had similar problems until I properly booted into EFI i.e. I could boot from a GPT disc.

Hi Paul,

I know how confusing it is to keep track of what is which. Let's try to summarize it :

A - Problem Paul Boot 4TB
Your original problem about booting into a more than 2TB partition.

B - Problem Peter Boot
Anyone's problem at e.g. upgrading from W7 to W8 and the new disk for W8 can not be recognized (install will fail).

C - Problem Peter 4TB BIOS
Possibly a special problem dedicated to the Seagate ST4000DM000. Notice : This is with normal BIOS hence *not* the XXHighEnd PC.

D - Problem Paul Boot GTP
This is the problem which needs the DVD to boot from UEFI.

I realize that more variations exist already, but all these subjects were dealt with in this topic whether we recognize it or not (but I sure do).
Now I don't know what to do with this little list, but at least it should give you an answer on your question (quote from your text). Thus "C - Problem Peter 4TB BIOS" and it is not related to booting anywhere. Why ? because 3TB's just work and they are fully loaded. So, can this 4TB Seagate work with UEFI only ? Maybe. So a small extension on my yesterday's endeavors :

Yesterday I made the mistake to not format that second partition. Thus, I had DiscWizard created that 2TB plus 1.7TB or whatever MBR partition, and the first 2TB was formatted with it (or I did that myself - I forgot). Then I started copying and all went well. BUT, now I want to format the second partition and there is no way to do it. Well, *that* is new too. This must be related to this stupid DiscWizard "driver" which itself produces an error (a device attached to the system is not functioning) and where the normal MS procedure has the option greyed out to format it.

So now I seem to be stuck with a 4TB disk which can be utilized with 2TB only. Of course I only saw this after copying  the first 2TB on to it which doesn't go in 1 hour.

Question :
With the notice I did not Google for it, my drive is imprinted with "Recertified". The official label on it even shows that, but it is also imprinted on the metal case. I did *not* buy any refurbished disk and I looked - more of these at the same price are available. Maybe it was too cheap to be true (110 euros) but now I wonder ... is this the problem ? IOW, do you (Paul, Alain) also have this imprint on it ?
To me it looks like it received some firmware update since all further looks brand new to me. And that update (still) does not do its job (?)

Now I will Google for this, including that DiscWizard error I receive ...

Peter (who hates to start all over and try with self-created MBR just to try whether that helps but for sure will lose the copied data)

[AlainGr]

Hi Peter,

I do not see any "recertified" on my hard drive label. BTW it is mentionned that the firmware is CC52.

I did not try to have it bootable though... I can't recall if I formatted it with my old All Purpose PC or my UEFI music PC though...

Alain

[Scroobius]

Hi Peter - Booting into UEFI cannot work with Windows 7 and so the only way to be able to "see" a 4T disc is using the tools that are provided on the Seagate disc by the manufacturer. I guess these are the tools that "trick" the OS into seeing more than 2.2T. I had this working on another computer and it seemed OK but I did not check it very extensively and I did not attempt to install OS onto it (it was MBR).

Booting into UEFI only works from W8+ which is all I use now with XX so no I cannot really comment on the other options you list except that I gave up trying to get the 4T disc working with MBR and normal BIOS.

Cheers

Paul

[PeterSt]

Thank you Paul.

Notice that GPT is there to go beyond 2TB and this always works here. This is not related to any BIOS type that I know of and otherwise certainly not here.

This particular Seagate disk just s*cks. Period.

Regards,
Peter

[PeterSt]

Thank you Alain.

My firmware is CC54.

The drive actually rendered unusable.
I took it over to other PC's and it behaves differently everywhere. For example on a "XXHighEnd PC" other than the one I initialised it it won't be seen at all. Not by SATA connection, not by USB connection. However, with another type of USB dock, there it was. There though, I can't see anything else than 2TB.

Meanwhile downloaded Seagate SeaTools to check the disk, hoping that it would re-initialise the disk somehow, after trying to upgrade the firmware (not possible) so that would re-initialise.
Nothing helped.

Tried all kind of tools including DiskPart, nowhere more than 2TB to be seen. So I mean, to create partitions in.

Bringing that other dock to the original "BIOS" PC - same story. Almost, because the option "Inittialise" was there now, but "No function" (error).

Trying another USB3 dock in the USB2 port - nothing nowwhere. Plugging that into an USB3 port ...

hey

This time it showed the 2TB + 1.6TB again, all unallocated (oh yes, in an earlier step I took the plunge to delete all again).
Btwwww ... On the other PC's it showed the 1.6TB as the 2TB I filled up. But alas, all was mad anyway.

So, new chance ?

Again couldn't do anything with the 2nd partition. But this time the option convert to GTP was shown. So, did that.
Thus now - like in the very beginning - there was one 3.7TB space available. That would not work since it did not work before either. I wanted the MBR stuff.
So ... now convert to MBR. Ha, great, that worked. One 3.7TB MBR partition.

That though officially can't work, so no way I was going to try that. No, now it was time for the big trick ...

Shrink that 3.7TB to half of that - 1.85TB. Worked.
And yes, NOW that other remaining 1.85TB could be turned into a 2nd volume. And so I did.

Currently I am copying to that 2nd volume and will see whether it holds. When so I will do the first too.
And when that all happened, maybe other PC's see the disk/volumes as well.

TOTALLY NOT ADVISED this stupid disk.
This took me 4 hours or so, only today.

Another notrice I didn't mention earlier :
I know that USB docks matter for GPT partitioned disks. So the only one which works for those is the one I currently use (which works so far). But it is also the one which did not show a thing over USB2. This, while on the other PC's (UEFI !) it is the other way around (the USB3 dock shows nothing, as SATA does not on *one* of these PCs) and the USB2 dock did. But only that 2TB.
There is so much going on with this all that we better be careful with *any* conclusions. At least I don't have them.

Last thing : Here is this information about the special formatting of these disks : http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/221411en?language=en_US
So, 4K sectors instead of the normal 512 byte. Regarding this I took the opportunity to format the both partitions with a 4K cluster size; seemed better to me. Undoubtedly unrelated to the solution, but who knows. I am not going to retry. Fact is : previously I formatted with 64K. And, we may expect that the default (by Windows) will be set to 4K as well. So, leave it at the default (what many people will do but me never) could "help". I just don't know.


Peter (80GB copied so far)

[PeterSt]

Ok, one more thing for now. See screenshot below;

This shows (disk 6) one of my 3TB disks; it is the BIOS PC (so not UEFI). You can see that the partition is GPT because it offers to convert to MBR (if it would be MBR it would offer to convert to GPT). Ok, clear.
But what I post this for is to show that this too shows as "Basic". As a matter of fact all my disks show "Basic".

So, clear ?
Maybe not. Look at the second screenshot. This is my newly created 2 partition 4TB disk, the partitions created MBR. Ehm, but that too offers to convert to MBR.

So true, I don't understand one f*ck of this all.

[PeterSt]

Guys, just talking to myself here now ...

The copy to the 2nd partition just failed. Where ? at 185GB copied, and where 1850 + 185 = 2.3TB. So the total allowed or something (it always starts to fail somewhat later).

Now going to look into that shown "convert to MBR" - as if my own covert to that did not work ?

See you ...

[PeterSt]

Ah, ok, small misjudgement (or something); that possibility to convert to MBR is greyed out. It is so everywhere. So, convert to Dynamic disk is allowed (everywhere), and applying that to the 4TB fails on a "The system can not find the file specified". Actually it started to give all sorts of these error messages. Also at trying to reformat the the partition. *That* now tells me that somehow USB fails on this (huh ?).

So again dragged the disk over to an XXHighEnd PC (UEFI) and connected it to SATA. All is visible now.
And so now the copy happily continues over the network (because what I want to copy is in that "BIOS" PC).