New PC having troubles recognizing 4tb HDD

[Anoner]

This is a very weird and specific problem. I'm helping a friend who recently assembled their PC, and we are having assorted problems related to drivers, and while I don't know for sure if this is a driver issue, it sure seems likely to me.

 

So, their old PC had a working 4 TB HDD. Single GPT partition using all 4 TBs, working perfectly. During the new pc windows installation, I saw that the windows setup only recognized a 2TB partition of that HDD, which immediately set red flags for me. They removed the HDD, plugged on the old PC, and there it was with all its 4TB again being recognized, and all files safe and sound. Continued with the installation (installed it to an SSD). Had some issues with ethernet controller that I managed to fix and some other stuff.

Then they plugged the HDD back into the pc, and it doesn't appear on windows explorer. But it did appear in task manager and in device manager, so I thought that it just needed to be assigned a letter. I told them to launch disk management, and the HDD was there, but.... It's still only recognizing a single 2TB partition, an hasd 2 TB unallocated. And the partition is GPT. Image here.

 

They also can't assign a letter (image here) to the partition either. And since the HDD *has* files, we don't want to just wipe and format it with a 4tb partition. Anyone has any idea what happened? I'm considering either some driver issue or maybe some sata cable issue. In case of driver issues, any idea what it could be?

[emosun]

there any chance the machine you installed it in is SATA2 and not 3?

 

[RageTester]

Ways to recover files:

Can try putting the drive into adapter and connecting via USB.

Booting into linux and trying to access files from there.

Using software like "minitool partition wizard"

[Anoner]

6 hours ago, emosun said:

there any chance the machine you installed it in is SATA2 and not 3?

 

Nope, it is all Sata3, or at least, it should be. Mobo is Asrock x570 PG Velocita

 

5 hours ago, RageTester said:

Ways to recover files:

Can try putting the drive into adapter and connecting via USB.

Booting into linux and trying to access files from there.

Using software like "minitool partition wizard"

As far as I'm aware the files are still all there and accessible, just not through this new computer, so there's no need to recover files. But I'll keep it in mind if necessary.