THE COMPUTER THREAD

[RVR II]

Yeah it is actually.. Works Great with the GTA games

Still trying to figure out a capture glitch to my laptop from the Diamond 1080 HD Capture device..
Running HDMI cables from the video card to the Diamond Capture and to the monitor and the picture looks great but when I connect the USB cable from the Diamond Capture device to my laptop, the picture is 'off center' with the bottom 25% of the picture showing on the top of the picture for some reason
I'm gonna call tech support when they open to see if they can figure it out, otherwise I'll to figure out some other way to capture my gameplay so I can post it on my YouTube game channel (RVR2.0) 

[d00hickey]

I didn't know Diamond still made hardware. My first GPU was a Diamond 3dfx Voodoo 2 card back in the late nineties.

[RVR II]

The tech support says that capture device is for game consoles and not designed for capturing from PC..
What do you all use for capturing gameplay?? I mean I seem so close but I'm missing something here

[LucasM]

Well, crap... did I just spend more money than I needed to?

I bought a 4TB drive for external media storage (so using an external case/adapter), but Win 7 only sees "1677.90 GB" as the MAXIMUM for it.  It doesn't show that it is remotely as large as it actually is.  Hell, it doesn't even show the size that Windows has already formatted 2TB drives at (which show up as 1863.02 GB).

Since the initialization said "for drives over 2TB it is suggested one use the GUID partition table (GPT)", I used that for initialization.  Since that obviously didn't work for it to show even 1/2 its actual size, I tried re-initializing using a standard master boot record (MBR) to see if I could get the size to show up long enough to at least partition it, but it ended up shrinking the usable size even more.

Did I just effectively buy a double-priced, and simultaneously undersized, 2TB drive (since 1/2 of its platters appear to be inaccessible)?

Or is it possible that the interface electronics are preventing the reading of the full size?  i.e. if it were installed into the case as part of the computer itself, rather than used as an external drive, would it all show up?

I can't imagine that Windows would give information in Win 7 on formatting a larger-than-2TB drive if it couldn't actually USE a larger-than-2TB drive.

[RVR II]

You need to go into your disc management and 'Storage' to combine the partitions into 1 so it sees the full storage amount of the hard drive..

Here's what I did..

[LucasM]

Thank you for trying to help, RVR II.  But the thing is, in Windows Disc Management, it only shows the drive as being "1678.02 GB" [now with MBR initialization] with NO partitions on it yet.  There's nothing to combine.  That is all it shows as the full drive size.

But from this picture, it can even be seen that the 2 TB drive attached to the system (the "W" drive - like the 4 TB one, it is also a Western Digital Green drive) is even showing up as having more usable space in its partition, than this 4 TB one has while still being completely unallocated.

[Variety of Cells]

Well, crap... did I just spend more money than I needed to?

I bought a 4TB drive for external media storage (so using an external case/adapter), but Win 7 only sees "1677.90 GB" as the MAXIMUM for it.  It doesn't show that it is remotely as large as it actually is.  Hell, it doesn't even show the size that Windows has already formatted 2TB drives at (which show up as 1863.02 GB).

Since the initialization said "for drives over 2TB it is suggested one use the GUID partition table (GPT)", I used that for initialization.  Since that obviously didn't work for it to show even 1/2 its actual size, I tried re-initializing using a standard master boot record (MBR) to see if I could get the size to show up long enough to at least partition it, but it ended up shrinking the usable size even more.

Did I just effectively buy a double-priced, and simultaneously undersized, 2TB drive (since 1/2 of its platters appear to be inaccessible)?

Or is it possible that the interface electronics are preventing the reading of the full size?  i.e. if it were installed into the case as part of the computer itself, rather than used as an external drive, would it all show up?

I can't imagine that Windows would give information in Win 7 on formatting a larger-than-2TB drive if it couldn't actually USE a larger-than-2TB drive.

Might be able to find some help here: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2487014/4tb-showing-windows-1677-90gb.html

[LucasM]

Well, crap... did I just spend more money than I needed to?

I bought a 4TB drive for external media storage (so using an external case/adapter), but Win 7 only sees "1677.90 GB" as the MAXIMUM for it.  It doesn't show that it is remotely as large as it actually is.  Hell, it doesn't even show the size that Windows has already formatted 2TB drives at (which show up as 1863.02 GB).

Since the initialization said "for drives over 2TB it is suggested one use the GUID partition table (GPT)", I used that for initialization.  Since that obviously didn't work for it to show even 1/2 its actual size, I tried re-initializing using a standard master boot record (MBR) to see if I could get the size to show up long enough to at least partition it, but it ended up shrinking the usable size even more.

Did I just effectively buy a double-priced, and simultaneously undersized, 2TB drive (since 1/2 of its platters appear to be inaccessible)?

Or is it possible that the interface electronics are preventing the reading of the full size?  i.e. if it were installed into the case as part of the computer itself, rather than used as an external drive, would it all show up?

I can't imagine that Windows would give information in Win 7 on formatting a larger-than-2TB drive if it couldn't actually USE a larger-than-2TB drive.

Might be able to find some help here: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2487014/4tb-showing-windows-1677-90gb.html

Thank you, VoC.  So after looking up UEFI (and seeing my root dir is in MBR/BIOS mode) it appears the answer is "yes: I spent over twice what I needed to and got less than the capacity of just another 2 TB drive". 

[Tripe]

Okay so I just got a new computer with the vileness that is windows 8. Thing is, the folder on my external drive that contains all my music is apparently unable to be opened now, no other folder is like this. Has anyone ever experienced this when switching to W8? Anyone know how to fdix it? I followed some instructions on changing permisiions but those didn't seem to take.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Well, crap... did I just spend more money than I needed to?

I bought a 4TB drive for external media storage (so using an external case/adapter), but Win 7 only sees "1677.90 GB" as the MAXIMUM for it.  It doesn't show that it is remotely as large as it actually is.  Hell, it doesn't even show the size that Windows has already formatted 2TB drives at (which show up as 1863.02 GB).

Since the initialization said "for drives over 2TB it is suggested one use the GUID partition table (GPT)", I used that for initialization.  Since that obviously didn't work for it to show even 1/2 its actual size, I tried re-initializing using a standard master boot record (MBR) to see if I could get the size to show up long enough to at least partition it, but it ended up shrinking the usable size even more.

Did I just effectively buy a double-priced, and simultaneously undersized, 2TB drive (since 1/2 of its platters appear to be inaccessible)?

Or is it possible that the interface electronics are preventing the reading of the full size?  i.e. if it were installed into the case as part of the computer itself, rather than used as an external drive, would it all show up?

I can't imagine that Windows would give information in Win 7 on formatting a larger-than-2TB drive if it couldn't actually USE a larger-than-2TB drive.

Might be able to find some help here: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2487014/4tb-showing-windows-1677-90gb.html

Thank you, VoC.  So after looking up UEFI (and seeing my root dir is in MBR/BIOS mode) it appears the answer is "yes: I spent over twice what I needed to and got less than the capacity of just another 2 TB drive". 

Wow, so most of the time windows gets installed as BIOS even if the hardware supports UEFI.  Options are to reinstall windows or try some tools that might or might not work to reconfigure your current boot partition...

I wonder if Windows 10 will solve this?  I was thinking of getting some larger drives to use for backup but guess I'll stick with 2TB ones for a while.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

OK, now it's even more confusing, reading more sites it looks like you should be able to create a GPT drive even if you don't have UEFI.  Seems UEFI is only required if you want to boot from a GPT drive.

LucasM, if the following isn't helpful maybe the USB interface you have is limiting the type of format possible.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn653580%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

[LucasM]

OK, now it's even more confusing, reading more sites it looks like you should be able to create a GPT drive even if you don't have UEFI.  Seems UEFI is only required if you want to boot from a GPT drive.

LucasM, if the following isn't helpful maybe the USB interface you have is limiting the type of format possible.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn653580%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Thank you!  I may feel up to trying tomorrow.  Just too worn out today to do any more right now.

[d00hickey]

Holy shit The Screen Savers show from TechTV is back on 

It's called "The New Screen Savers". It started in May and all of the episodes can be found on Youtube.

[LucasM]

OK, now it's even more confusing, reading more sites it looks like you should be able to create a GPT drive even if you don't have UEFI.  Seems UEFI is only required if you want to boot from a GPT drive.

LucasM, if the following isn't helpful maybe the USB interface you have is limiting the type of format possible.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn653580%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Well, I tried reading that page and it didn't have anything I hadn't tried, so I followed one of the links on it and found this on the Windows GPT FAQ page:

What about mixing and matching GPT and MBR disks on the same system?

GPT and MBR disks can be mixed on systems that support GPT, as described earlier. However, you must be aware of the following restrictions:

    Systems that support UEFI require that boot partition must reside on a GPT disk. Other hard disks can be either MBR or GPT.
    Both MBR and GPT disks can be present in a single dynamic disk group. Volume sets can span both MBR and GPT disks.

So since my boot drive is MBR, this disc can't be used as a GPT disc (even though it could be initialized that way, this apparently means that it wouldn't have worked when done with partitioning and formatting), and therefore, can't be used for more than the 1677.90 GB.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

OK, now it's even more confusing, reading more sites it looks like you should be able to create a GPT drive even if you don't have UEFI.  Seems UEFI is only required if you want to boot from a GPT drive.

LucasM, if the following isn't helpful maybe the USB interface you have is limiting the type of format possible.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn653580%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Well, I tried reading that page and it didn't have anything I hadn't tried, so I followed one of the links on it and found this on the Windows GPT FAQ page:

What about mixing and matching GPT and MBR disks on the same system?

GPT and MBR disks can be mixed on systems that support GPT, as described earlier. However, you must be aware of the following restrictions:

    Systems that support UEFI require that boot partition must reside on a GPT disk. Other hard disks can be either MBR or GPT.
    Both MBR and GPT disks can be present in a single dynamic disk group. Volume sets can span both MBR and GPT disks.

So since my boot drive is MBR, this disc can't be used as a GPT disc (even though it could be initialized that way, this apparently means that it wouldn't have worked when done with partitioning and formatting), and therefore, can't be used for more than the 1677.90 GB.

Then I'm still confused, unless that is simply a poorly worded description of requiring UEFI if you want to boot from a GPT disk, that is what the other page clearly says.   My system now has an MBR disk as the boot disk, and 2 GPT disks for data that are 1862.89 GB each.

I found this about updating the intel chipset drivers to RST v11 or v13 in order to see larger disks:

http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-Mobile-Drives/WD4003FZEX-only-shows-1677-90-GB-instead-of-4-TB/td-p/829116