no UEFI BIOS and 3TB hard disk drive

johnyb98 · January 6, 2015

Good evening!

The system I have is as follows:

mobo ASUS M3N78 (no UEFI BIOS)
AMD Phenom II X3 2.5 GHz Triple-Core
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce® 8 series
RAM 4GB (2 x 2GB DDR2)

I have made the mistake first to buy the HDD without a research about my motherboard's limitations and after the buy to find the problems forward.

I bought Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001 3TB SATA3. In BIOS it identifies it and shows that its size is only about 840GB (sorry for this "about" but right now I do not have the opportunity to place the HDD on the machine and tell the exact BIOS size - but it for sure shows it <1TB). Except the new one Seagate, I have another two HDDs for the same machine. They have different O/S for my needs:
Hitachi 1TB - Windows 7 32-bit.
WD 320GB - Windows 8 32-bit

The steps I made on my system when I bought ST3000DM001:

1. Connected Hitachi with Windows 7 and the new ST3000DM001. Windows asked for the new one HDD to make it MBR or GPT. I didn't know and made it MBR.
2. Go to "Disk management" in order to create one partition and format it:could not.
3. Connected WD with Windows 8 and the new ST3000DM001.
4. Disk management
5. Right click on new ST3000DM001 and converted it to GPT:success
6. Created one partition:success
7. Quick format:success
8. On "My Computer" it does see it and its useful size all 3000GB
9. Just because I wondered what about Windows 7 32-bit, I again Connected Hitachi with Windows 7 and the new ST3000DM001. On "My Computer" it does see it and its useful size all 3000GB, just as Windows 8 32-bit.

Although things seem to be right, I believe they are not. I have checked internet and see about limitations in this motherboard and this size of HDDs. So, I proceeded with this post.
The thing I want to do is to make only one partition the whole disk and install windows 7 or Windows 8 (as I have seen in web I have not both choices:I think I am forced in Windows 8 installation and necessarily 64-bit edition). But this is not something that bothers me particularly:if I should install Windows 8, I have no problem.

But first of all, I would like you to help me with the whole matter:what about the combination of my motherboard and the specific HDD size, the thing that BIOS identifies it but only 840GB and in Windows I can see it in "My computer" all useful 3TB (and in both Windows 7 & 8 that are both just 32-bit installation) makes me both worry and wonder. I do not think that I should proceed with the installation.

I would appreciate your help.

Thank you for your time.

Jade · January 6, 2015

You could buy a SATA PCI Express expansion card that supports it, but other than that, you're pretty much out of luck without the motherboard supporting it otherwise. It'll probably just stop letting you write to the disk after it exceeds the 840gb, but if not, then you're most likely fine.

johnyb98 · January 6, 2015

First, thank you for the answer.

Of course I reject the extra expense solution of an extra controller card.

The fact that after converting the disk to a GPT one on the Windows 8, creating one partition, quick formatting it and showing it in its maximum potential all 3TB in both Windows 8 32-bit and Windows 7 32-bit is just a failure? An illusion? And a GREAT RISK to want to use it for all its size?