UEFI & GPT Boot Problem

[Scroobius]

This is not super important but I just wondered if anyone has any experience of this.

My PC is the same spec. as the XXHighEnd PC. So it is UEFI and all "BIOS" changes I make are in the UEFI menu. I recently bought a 4T Seagate disc which I have set to GPT.

All fine so far and with the OS on another disc (using a smaller MBR disc) I can see the 4T Seagate (all of the 4 T in one or more partitions).

The problem arises when I attempt to install W8 on the 4T disc - it will not install on the GPT disc. If I set it to MBR then W8 will install but then I do not see all of the 4T on the disc.

It seems that the PC cannot be booting into EFI and so I  removed all bootable devices apart from the internal DVD rewriter and in "BIOS" I noted that the DVD writer was listed with two boot option one was UEFI. So I then selected the UEFI and inhibited the other selection. So then the PC could only boot from one option ie the UEFI DVD rewriter. But it will not boot returning an error message that there is a problem with the boot device.

I just wondered if anyone had trodden this path before?

Cheers

P

[boleary]

Hey Paul, in the paperwork that comes with your 4tb HD, there should be a link to a Seagate utility that you need to download to format the drive for UEFI. Once you've run the utility you can load W8 and it will see all 4 tb's.I've done that now on two 3tb drives. Let me know if you can't find it cause I saved that utility somewhere.....I think.

[PeterSt]

(I read Brian's post in the mean time, but I don't see the relation with how I experienced the problem)

Me.

Paul, I think you tried all what I tried myself, and I couldn't work it out other than making it MBR. And I even tried with hex editors and what not.

In my case it wasn't about > 2TB (which would require GPT to see all above the 2TB (4TB in your case)) so I could give up easily.
If you ask me this is just a W8 problem, because whatever is thrown at you I never experienced with W7. Similar is the necessity to remove all other drives in order to make the one you want bootable.

While the latter problem is fairly often described hence known, the thing about the MBR necessity is not. Or at least it wasn't back at the time when I tried to deal with it (6 months ago ?).

So ... not much helpful, unless I prove that it just can't be done and it is thus a fact. But maybe I did not try all. For example, that this is related to UEFI BIOS (which you seem to imply ?) I did not know.

Lastly and maybe somewhat helpful, to get a better grip on it all I used a second PC to create the partition, format it and all necessary to let W8 install more easily, but that did not help either. Anyway that works more fast.

So,
Peter

[AlainGr]

Hi Paul,

It happened to me too, but at the time I was too impatient to check for a solution.

This link may help you ? http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408

It says that you need to format the drive in GPT partition type prior to installation, so I guess that you need to have the OS working on another drive to do so.

But this is not all: you also need to use UEFI instead of BIOS, but at this point I suppose it means that you specify "UEFI" boot type (or something like that) in the BIOS for that drive...

Since I finally set for having just an OS on a SSD and the 4TB drive through network I did not need to do this, but thought it could help...

Regards,

Alain
PS: I think that Brian has the solution There is certainly a utility on the Seagate website for this situation...

[AlainGr]

I think this is what Brian mentionned for Seagate ?

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/218619en

Alain

[boleary]

Yes, there's a link to a "DiscWizard" utility at the end of the article. It works for W8 though it only discusses W7.

[Scroobius]

Thanks Guys  -  As far as I can tell the disc utility allows to set the disc to GPT (I can do that anyway no problem) and if the disc is MBR then it can "trick" the OS into seeing all 4T. Those are not really my problems.

I am sure (as far as I can be) that the PC is booting with UEFI on top of BIOS (and I guess that is the case for most people) - so many of the UEFI features are available but it is not a "proper" fully fledged UEFI boot. For that reason only MBR discs can be used to load the OS.

It seems that for years Apple have been using UEFI and even at this late stage Microsoft still have not been able to get it sorted out properly.

Cheers

Paul

[boleary]

Not sure I understand your issue Paul. After using the utility and formatting in GTP I was able to load the os (both W7 & 8)on a 3 tb drive which recognized all 3 tb's with no partition. Hope that makes sense.

[PeterSt]

with no partition. Hope that makes sense.

haha

[boleary]

Writing too fast. I have two 3tb drives: one running W7 and the other running W8. Each was formatted with the Seagate DiscWizard utility and then I was able to load the OS's, which are able to see/use all 3 tb's respectively.

[Scroobius]

Looks as though sorted now - the problem was getting the PC to boot in EFI which it now is. I also had to install in one large partition and had to configure partitions after the OS was installed. So far so good.

Cheers

Paul

[Scroobius]

Since getting EFI working properly on my PC there is one advantage that I was not expecting.

Playing music over my dynamically stop / start LAN there are now no delays at all in fact with 1Gb LAN speed I can't tell any difference between playing music over LAN and from a local HDD. Even after a reboot the LAN is immediately available.

There may have been a problem before I was not aware of (although to be fair the delays were not too bad) but it could be because the LAN is now "handled" by EFI rather than by W8 - whatever it is a welcome improvement!!!

Paul

[PeterSt]

Hey ...

Maybe in the future this is going to help someone - but not sure whether it is really related :

I have been working with 3TB disks sufficiently enough to know that they work with one (3TB) partition as long as they are GPT formatted. Notice that I am not talking about booting here. However, I now have a 4TB Seagate, formatted that GPT as one partition, and that goes wrong when something like 13GB is copied to it. So it looks like this really requires that special Seagate formatting (DiscWizward) ?
Also, I read that Seagate applies some "special formatting" themselves when the disc leaves the factory (so to speak). So that smells somewhat.

I've now made two 2TB partitions on it, and so far so good (60GB copied on to the first partition).

Peter

[PeterSt]

I've now made two 2TB partitions on it, and so far so good (60GB copied on to the first partition).

Scratch that; it again failed (now at 80GB). So or the disk just fails or it needs that DiscWizard which I am going to try now ...

[PeterSt]

Next attempt :

I now used the DiscWizard;
Originally I had it created a GPT partition, well, if it did anything at all. So since I could not check that, before making another copy attempt I changed that to MBR. So one 2TB partion and one for the remainder came from that. Next I tried to use the "extended paration" function, but that gave me an error. And so I left the two partitions be.

Now 650GB has been copied to it without problems.
But I can't say I like this much ...

Disk is a ST4000DM000.

Peter

[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).

[AlainGr]

Peter,

I am not sure if this will help, but this Microsoft article could explain a few things...
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa363785%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

A basic disk is normally how a disk is when we buy it. If someone wants to switch it to "Dynamic", it would be to have RAID or Spanning (with the notion of a "volume" that could for example take more than one drive)...

So for me, it would be best to leave it to "Basic", otherwise we will all be barking at the moon

Alain

[PeterSt]

Hey Alain,

I guess that happens when you never in your (also professional) life used RAID4-5 etc.

Aha ...

Thanks !
Peter

[AlainGr]

You are right... I still have an LSI RAID controller card that I removed from my All Purpose PC after playing with RAID 0 for a while... I would not recommend this, since I would tend to believe that it must be quite noisy electronically speaking...

It did that since I was curious and at the time the Intel software for RAID was unstable on my motherboard (ICHR9)... But RAID 0 ? It's fast, but there is absolutely no integrity with RAID 0... As soon as something fails, all fails... Got to have backups !

I still think that 2TB should be the maximum for a drive (even 1TB should be better with only one platter instead of multiple ones)... I thought about that for a while in the event I would need more than 2TB, but I can still hold all I like into this capacity... For the moment.

And from what I see, it would prevent a lot of headaches

Alain

[Scroobius]

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.

...........................................................

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

These look like all the problems I had with my ASRock PC which is why I ended up in UEFI. But before I sorted out UEFI at one point I did boot up and randomly was able to see 4T - however on next reboot I lost it and was only able to see one partition with 2.2T and could do nothing with the unallocated remaining space which was when I gave up and booted to UEFI.

So yes your experience looks entirely consistent with mine!! either the disc sucks or Microsoft sucks!!

[stefanobilliani]

There are some things to consider :

some HDD just tell you lies about the format when it comes to 4k vs 512  ( notice also the compatibility with the old u$ OS - I couldn't even name it , s*** ) . Truly formatting a 4k disk is not all that easy for beginners and also since u$ doesn't offer tools at the installation . I am not aware of true 4k disk right now , all of them *claimed* are a mix between 512 and 4k ...

Uefi works good to me . I can install in UEFI  from both DVD or USB stick .

Today I can't see why use MBR , which is not bad of course  .... but this is year 2014 .

Many of the troubles also arise when the disks have some broken sectors , and rarely, u$ or even the dedicated software from HDD producer  tell that the disk is to trow in the trash .

Just my thinking ....

Edit : to me there are differences using 4k HDD in performance ( look at some 500GB going around these days ) no matter what you do, some things are just different with that respect to the 512. If and only if the 4k is properly formatted it will  reach its speed , otherwise poor performance is in order .

[PeterSt]

Thank you for that insight Stefano.

My wonderful 4TB by now is fully loaded without further problems (though the UEFI XXHighEnd PC and 2x 2TB, SATA connected), except for the minor issue that the other XXHighEnd PC doesn't even see the disk through SATA. Nothing nada anywhere. Should be a PC issue, though other disks just work.
One difference I see is that the PC where it works has an older BIOS (UEFI) (v1.x) than the PC where it does not work (v3.x). Oh, and what I only think of now ... the PC where it works is W8, the others are W7 ...
Hmm ... I think Paul said something about that too.

Stupid stuff.
Peter

[PeterSt]

All,

(not really 100% related to the topic's title)

A bit of an older topic, but after obtaining another 4TB disk I now may now where it can go wrong, implying all the further issues I had with this.

First off : always connect such a disk to normal SATA; at least at the very first time of connecting I think this is crucial.

When you boot up the system, a small (normal) message pops up that says "You must restart your computer to apply these changes". See first screenshot below.
Now notice that such message appears in such way that you *will* think "uh, what ?". Because remember, you acutaully didn't do a thing, and no balloon appears (appeared) anywhere to tell you that you installed something. Well, you only attached a new disk.

What I now think is that when such a disk is first connected, it will install a driver for it, like you see this happening for USB devices (disks the same). But for SATA this is different, and I think that for USB this (driver) doesn't even exist. Also notice that this will be about the "writing" capabilities, or better how it can be partioned and formatted later, and not so much about reading once all is properly organized on the disk.

When this step is skipped, meaning or you don't reboot after this message, or you connect it through a means which doesn't even install this "driver", and next you are going to partion it, hell will be yours. Well, like I encountered it as described in this topic.

While the 4TB disk I used in this topic was a Seagate, I ws sure to now obtain a WD in order to avoid the problems. Also notice that the Seagate comes along with the notification that it needs the Seagate driver, while a WD does not tell about such thing.
So that did it now for me ? I don't think so because I also obtained a 6TB from Seagate. That went was OK too and the very same message showed after connecting it (only then I was 100% sure that this message has to be about such large disk).
One thing : I did not format the 6TB into one 6TB partition because I just wanted 3x 2TB (eliminating some disks from my "server" without changing Gallery references). But if I look back on the issues I had with the 4TB - even formatting into 2 2TB partitions wasn't possible.

What I already told in this topic I think, is to stay far away from anything that smells like USB docks. They just never ever do any job when it is about partitioning. Making (clone) backups to them - same thing. No Acronises can deal with it, which also tells something.

Anyway I now have my first 6TB in the system. All good so far.

Peter