Can't format 1.5Tb Seagate Barracuda SATA internal hard drive

I have the exact same issue with a Western Digital WD Green 1.5 TB Hard Drive (HDD).

I can format it up to 73% but no further. I have tried to create partitions but it does not change a thing. Only 1 TB (1024 GB) can be accessed.

Can we get some help from Dell on this? My e521 has been a solid performer so far. Even Vista 32 bits is fine.

Is it an issue with the hardware, Bios, Vista 32 bits?

The BIOS shows that the disk is identified as a 1.5 TB disk.

The device Manager (Disk Drive manager where you can initialize, create partitions on and format disks) recognizes it as a 1.5 TB.

So far I use the disk as a full 1TB (1024 GB) HDD. There are about 373 GB I cannot allocate to any partition or file system as it won't format further than 73% (BTW it take hours to reach 73%, but I guess it is due to the size and Green nature of this WD HDD).

Vincent

Fellows, you need to use your search engines.  So far I've found this:  Toms Hardware; Can't Fully Format Seagate ST31500341AS; which led me to this:  Seagate Knowledge Base Large SATA Drives Will Not Completely Format.

The chipset on the E521 is the Nvidia GeForce 6150LE; you will find that chipset number in the table on the Seagate note.  Notice that the note says that older drivers "may" have been used and this seems to be connected to the problem you are having.  If this is indeed the problem you may need to seek alternative solutions as the E521 is past the point at which Dell is likely to issue an updated driver.  I'm sure Dell will not guarantee success if you decide to pull a newer driver directly from the nVidia site, and if any mods have been made specially for Dell the update might even disable your machines.

I would read through the Toms Hardware thread to see if any of the alternate suggestions might be of help before I would try any driver not issued by Dell.

Incidentally, from what I understand, drives larger than 2 TB are going to give everyone trouble eventually as the MBR method of partitioning doesn't support those larger drives very well.  We are going to need to learn about the GUID approach.

Excellent!  A job well done.

Best of luck to you!

Wow, thank you so much for posting this!! I have a WD Caviar Green 1.5 TB HD and your post, from step 6 - 8 made a huge difference for me, and finally I could make use of the whole drive. I would highly recommend if someone else is having a similar problem to follow your advice from step 1-8. I had already updated Motherboard, had updated the Nvidia driver to the nforce series, which, on another board was recommended. (For the record, I am using the 15.49 nForce drivers. I think the main point that I was missing was in not checking for updated SATA drivers using device manager; AND reinstalling the latest Nvidia drivers again, restarting the pc, and I went an extra step further, deleting the partition and volume, and started over again. It formatted (quick format) within seconds, the way it should work. Had you not posted this, I may have been googling until my eyes were googling out of my head so thank you so much for being courteous to post your how to guide.

YES!!! It does feel good to be able to make use of the drive, I agree.

Now, if I can just remember NOT to let windows updates try to install their 'newest' drivers because in my case, the nforce drivers (windows 64 bit by the way) were the only ones that worked for this from what I can see. I do think too that updating the SATA controllers contributed to the success.

I've tried this 4 times now, and no luck.  I cannot believe there isn't a REAL solution to this yet.