Difficulties partitioning my new HDD. Faulty HD?

0x80300024Hey guys,

I received a new WD 4TB HDD I'm planning to use to install windows 10 on.
However the strangest thing is happening making me suspect that the HDD is faulty.

I booted Windows 10 install set up and and choose advanced/custom install
I identified my new HHD Drive 1 with 3,72TB of unallocated space.
I go on to create a 500 GB partition where I will install Windows and the rest will be used as storage.
I click on "new" and set the partition size to 512000MB

To my suprise it created 2 other partitions
Partition 1 500GB
Partition 2 1.6TB
Partition 3 2.2TB (number might not be accurate writing them by memory)

Normally it should have been
Partition 1 500GB (the one I create)
Partition 2 the rest of the unallocated space

Now I get a 0x80300024 error when I try to install windows on partition 1 (which I formatted of course)

I booted on my rescue disk to use AOMEI partition assistant and deleted all the partitions to start from scratch.

On the main screen it says my disk has 3.64TB unallocated but when I click on create a partition I can only set the partition size to 2TB leaving 1.64TB unused. Isn't strange?

Is there something wrong with the new HDD I just received?

- - - Updated - - -

I launched diskpart via cmd

I typed:

- list disk
- select disk 0
- clean
- list partition

it says there are no partitions on this disk to show (clean disk delete all partitions right?)

Now I know how to create a primary partition but I don't know the command to create a 500GB partition

- - - Updated - - -

I'm thinking, could it be that the issue comes from the partitioning scheme? Win10 automatically chose MBR when I create my partition and split the remaining 3,1 TB into 2 partitions.


I found here that win Win10 automatically chosse MBR when booting from a NON-UEFI PC Windows 10 Clean Install: MBR or GPT? | [H]ard|Forum (which is my case)

dalchina said:

The normal procedure for installing Windows is to install to unallocated space.
If you were installing a UEFI-based Windows, 4 partitions will typically be created as part of the installation.

I suppose you might consider creating a partition of, say, 2Tb or whatever you choose, leaving unallocated space from the start of the disk and install Windows there.

Which does your PC support? UEFI? MBR? Which are you aiming to use?

You are correct I should have created a partition of 3TB leaving unallocated space from the start of the disk which I just did. Then I launched win 10 install, I found my 500GB of unallocated space from the start of the disk, hit new, created a partition using all the 500GB space and then normally I should have been able to to install WIN 10 on the 500GB partition.

However Win10 install says " the selected disk is of the GPT partition style, windows cannot be installed to this disk"

How can I get Windows 10 installed on a GPT disk using a NON-UEFI system?

I'd prefer not to use MBR as it will force me to have 3 partitions as it seems MBR don't support partition larger than 2GB

f14tomcat said:

Disk is GPT but not configured for UEFI, yet you are booting UEFI. Check this MS article for options.



https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...artition-style

Thanks for the link.
But I don't think it applies to me as it says "When installing Windows on UEFI-based PCs"
I'm installing windows on a BIOS-based PC

I can now confirm the issue is the partitioning scheme.

I cleaned my disk, and created the partitions using win 10 install which partitionned my disk in MBR and created 3 partitions.
1 partition of 500gb
1 partition of 1548gb
1 partition of 1678 gb

The next button is clickable and I can install install windows 10 when the disk of the MBR partition style.

However due to the limitation of MBR not supporting 4TG and larger HDD, its splits my HDD into 3 partitions which I don't want.

When I convert my disk to GPT with diskpart, I'm able to create only 2 partitons
1 partition of 500gb
1 partition of 3,1GB

However when using the GPT partition style windows cannot be installed on the GPS disk propably because I'm using a BIOS-based PC

Is there any way around this?

f14tomcat said:

When you say BIOS, I believe you mean Legacy, i.e. non-UEFI. Legacy does not understand the GPT file format. It wants to see MBR. There may be a way to do this, but I'm not familiar with it.

Yes Non-UEFI PC.
Legacy do understand GPT file format. I have a windows 7 PC to which I added a 4TB HDD using the GPT file format and it's recognized by windows 7 on my NON-UEFI PC.
However maybe it's a different story when we want to install windows on GTP HDD on a NON-UEFI PC.

That I don't know. Hoping someone has more info around this. I will wait and see if someone has a solution. Otherwise no choice and I will just use the MBR file format and have 3 partitions