Seagate Barracuda ST3000 only shows as 800 GB

Question

Level 1

4 points

Seagate Barracuda ST3000 only shows as 800 GB

I have bought two of these drives to replace two 1 GB drives that have failed in my external enclosures. These are connected via USB 2.

The drives only showed up as 800 GB, even though Seagate says they should show up as 3 TB. I suspected the enclosures, so I grabbed two new ones that both say they support 3TB drives. No dice. The drives still show up in disk utility as 801.57 GB drives, and wil not expand a partition beyond that. What's up with this? Is there a way to fix it, or do I simply need to return everything.

I have tried the drives and enclosures on a 2009 mac mini running OS X 10.8 and an early 2011 iMac 27 inch running OS X 10.7. Both machines show the same result.

Thanks

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Posted on Mar 6, 2013 8:10 PM

Reply

Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,379 points

Mar 8, 2013 1:45 PM in response to ChrisInTexas

Hi, it likely is/was the enclosures, were these drives formatted in the old enclosures that didn't understand the new 4096 Byte Advanved Format sectors?

Reply

Answer 2

ChrisInTexas Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 8, 2013 5:08 PM in response to BDAqua

I don't think so -- these drives were bought new. When I put the drive in the first enclosure, it was only recognized as 800 GB. I didn't try to initialize it. I bought the second enclosure, which is rated to support the 3 TB drive, and it only shows the 800 GB. So, what do I do know? I think the only option is to return everything and start over :-)

Even if the drive was previously formatted for the old "format", how do I get the system to reformat it using the new format?

Ideas are appreciated.

Reply

Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

250,379 points

Mar 9, 2013 5:17 PM in response to ChrisInTexas

Possibly the 2nd enclosures were wrong, or mabe do support 3 TB, but not Advanced Format?

The 3TB->800GB is well known...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3184118?start=15&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2741887?start=15&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4835990?start=0&tstart=0

I guess you were right about the enclosure. I sort of suspected that but didn't want it to be true. Shelled out another $80 for a NewerTech HDD dock (model Voyager Q) plugged in the "offending" hard drive and voila! All working well now.

Reply