Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

HGST hard drive says 4tb on sticker, but when intialized, it was 1.8 TB

S

Sossity

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 12, 2010
1,360
32
I may have screwed something up here, but here we go, I will try to explain.

I recently bought a Western digital My Book essentials 4tb external hard drive. I bought it thinking I would get a 4 TB western digital branded hard drive for less, by buying the external enclosure in an all in one plastic enclosure, & later take it out of the plastic enclosure for the bare hard drive.

I thought this was a good deal, as I saw quite a few bare 4 tb western digital hard drives that were much more expensive than one in an enclosure.

So I got the 4 TB Western digital Mybook essentials, with USB 3.0, USB 2.0, in the black plastic enclosure. It felt flimsy, & I wanted the bare hard drive out of it, so I pried it out. It was not labeled a western digital but an HGST, it was actually a Hitachi deskstar.

I then proceed to put it in my own enclosure, & connected it to my mac. I get a message saying the drive is unreadable, & was prompted to initialize it.

I did an erase format in disk utility, now the untitled drive reads that it is only 1.8 TB!

I then connected it to a windows PC, and the same thing, it was only 1.8 TB.

What happened? I know I may have made a dumb move, is there any way I can get all 4 tb back again?
 
What size did the box state, not just the sticker?

Is it possible that someone just mislabled it and put a 4tb sticker on a 2 tb drive? If the price was too good to be true, I'd lean towards it being mislabeled.

What does the receipt show - 4tb drive?

Also is there a serial number on the box, does it match the drive?
 
The drive itself should have a sticker on it that says what size it is.

Regardless, you may be screwed, as you violated the warranty by taking it out of the case.
 
It did not come in the original box, it was one shipped from the manufacturer, as the seller on ebay did not have the one they originally listed, but offered to have one sent to me from the manufacturer.

I forgot to mention that before I took it out of it's enclosure, I connected it to my mac & it was reading as 4tb, but after removing it & initializing, it seems to have lost some terabytes.
 
I would check the partitioning on the drive. It's possible that you have only one partition that is less than the full drive size. The OS will only report what it sees as being formatted.
 
Sossity said:
I then proceed to put it in my own enclosure, & connected it to my mac. I get a message saying the drive is unreadable, & was prompted to initialize it.

I did an erase format in disk utility, now the untitled drive reads that it is only 1.8 TB!

I then connected it to a windows PC, and the same thing, it was only 1.8 TB.

What happened? I know I may have made a dumb move, is there any way I can get all 4 tb back again?
Click to expand...

I just went through this 3 days ago. Make sure that it is formatted with a GUID partition scheme. MBR partition scheme(the default for externals) can only see a max of 2TB(1.8 after formatting).
 
Sossity said:
I then proceed to put it in my own enclosure, & connected it to my mac. I get a message saying the drive is unreadable, & was prompted to initialize it.
Click to expand...

Your enclosure may not support 4TB or even 3TB. Not all do.
 
Sossity said:
I then proceed to put it in my own enclosure, & connected it to my mac. I get a message saying the drive is unreadable, & was prompted to initialize it.

I did an erase format in disk utility, now the untitled drive reads that it is only 1.8 TB!
Click to expand...

Your enclosure's controller does not support >2 TB volumes. You need another enclosure with a controller that does, like the original controller that came with your WD/Hitachi enclosure.
 
Sossity said:
I found 2 lengthy numbers;

HDS5C404OALE630

H3D40003254SE
Click to expand...
This is a 4TB disk, as it was in the original enclosure. Your enclosure doesn't support drives of this size. There's no mystery here.
 
chrfr said:
This is a 4TB disk, as it was in the original enclosure. Your enclosure doesn't support drives of this size. There's no mystery here.
Click to expand...

I echo this. Old enclosures have controllers that typically max out at 3 TBs. If they see more, they will lock you in at 1.8. Get a new case with a controller that can handle higher capacities.
 
can anybody suggest some good 4 tb controller enclosures? preferably made of aluminum, and swappable without needing tools.
 
Dalton63841 said:
Did you make sure to format with a GUID partition scheme in Disk Utility? MBR has issues with partitions bigger than 2TB.
Click to expand...

started the hard drive up, opened up disk utility, & it is a GUID partition table, the odd thing, I noticed was there was one part that read 4tb Hitachi media showing total capacity of 4 tb,with a long model number, then just below it, it read, untitled, (what I named it for now) with capacity 1.8 tb.

this leads me to believe that my current enclosures simply do not support 4tb hard drives.
 
Sossity said:
I may have screwed something up here, but here we go, I will try to explain.

I recently bought a Western digital My Book essentials 4tb external hard drive. I bought it thinking I would get a 4 TB western digital branded hard drive for less, by buying the external enclosure in an all in one plastic enclosure, & later take it out of the plastic enclosure for the bare hard drive.

I thought this was a good deal, as I saw quite a few bare 4 tb western digital hard drives that were much more expensive than one in an enclosure.

So I got the 4 TB Western digital Mybook essentials, with USB 3.0, USB 2.0, in the black plastic enclosure. It felt flimsy, & I wanted the bare hard drive out of it, so I pried it out. It was not labeled a western digital but an HGST, it was actually a Hitachi deskstar.

I then proceed to put it in my own enclosure, & connected it to my mac. I get a message saying the drive is unreadable, & was prompted to initialize it.

I did an erase format in disk utility, now the untitled drive reads that it is only 1.8 TB!

I then connected it to a windows PC, and the same thing, it was only 1.8 TB.

What happened? I know I may have made a dumb move, is there any way I can get all 4 tb back again?
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1525373565][/doublepost]Same problem except that my drive does not have an enclosure. The drive is a 4tb WD full size drive (not laptop). I'm using a usb3 desktop HD docking station by Salcar which mounts 2 insertable drives, like a toaster. ;) I've tried this with other 3 tb and 4tb drives using a different toaster style dock too. Never been able to get over 1.8TB. Following the advice in this stream, using disk utility, I tried to format the GUID partition but it only allows me to partition the usable space of 1.8TB. Not the free space of 2.2TB, which it shows, but doesn't allow any changes. I can reformat, but since I tried reformatting already with Apple's APFS, it will only let me erase using the same APFS. So what the heck? I imagine I could try to reformat it using a PC, maybe that would trick it. Any other advice?
 
soundasylum said:
[doublepost=1525373565][/doublepost]Same problem except that my drive does not have an enclosure. The drive is a 4tb WD full size drive (not laptop). I'm using a usb3 desktop HD docking station by Salcar which mounts 2 insertable drives, like a toaster. ;) I've tried this with other 3 tb and 4tb drives using a different toaster style dock too. Never been able to get over 1.8TB. Following the advice in this stream, using disk utility, I tried to format the GUID partition but it only allows me to partition the usable space of 1.8TB. Not the free space of 2.2TB, which it shows, but doesn't allow any changes. I can reformat, but since I tried reformatting already with Apple's APFS, it will only let me erase using the same APFS. So what the heck? I imagine I could try to reformat it using a PC, maybe that would trick it. Any other advice?
Click to expand...
You need a new docking station that supports larger drives. Although you're using a dock, it's essentially the same as a disk enclosure.
 
Sossity said:
I may have screwed something up here, but here we go, I will try to explain.

I recently bought a Western digital My Book essentials 4tb external hard drive. I bought it thinking I would get a 4 TB western digital branded hard drive for less, by buying the external enclosure in an all in one plastic enclosure, & later take it out of the plastic enclosure for the bare hard drive.

I thought this was a good deal, as I saw quite a few bare 4 tb western digital hard drives that were much more expensive than one in an enclosure.

So I got the 4 TB Western digital Mybook essentials, with USB 3.0, USB 2.0, in the black plastic enclosure. It felt flimsy, & I wanted the bare hard drive out of it, so I pried it out. It was not labeled a western digital but an HGST, it was actually a Hitachi deskstar.

I then proceed to put it in my own enclosure, & connected it to my mac. I get a message saying the drive is unreadable, & was prompted to initialize it.

I did an erase format in disk utility, now the untitled drive reads that it is only 1.8 TB!

I then connected it to a windows PC, and the same thing, it was only 1.8 TB.

What happened? I know I may have made a dumb move, is there any way I can get all 4 tb back again?
Click to expand...


The other answers here are overthinking it. I haven't researched the cause. Don't have time. It has to do with the GUID Partition Table (GPT) not set right. As soon as I wanted to use a 4Tb drive not in a NAS I ran into this problem. Disk Utility should deal with this but apparently it doesn't (yet).

BUT...


• In Terminal do this: “diskutil list” to get a list of volumes and the disk # of the one to work on.


• Then carefully do this to fix the problem: “diskutil partitionDisk disk# GPT HFS+ newdisk R” carefully change the # to the number of the volume you want to work on.

It will partition the whole drive as one volume. And off you go!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back