Maximum Size Hard Disk on HP DC7700?

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I recently upgraded from a 2TB to a 3TB (after the 2TB died).

I also upgraded from Win7 to Windows 10 at the same time.

A week later the OS won't boot.  When I look at the disk (popped it in another desktop) and ran Seagates SeaTools over it the disk looked to only be formatted to 2TB.  It passed all tests ok.

Tried to get Win10 to do an auto repair.  Failed.  Tried to refresh (keep user settings) .. failed.  Tried to wipe & reinstall .. also failed.

Wondering if there's a problem with the maximum hard disk size in the BIOS.  Currently running 1.06 (the latest from 2011?).

Hopefully someone could shed some light on this?

Thanks,

John.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi, John:

There are actually a couple of issues...

1. You cannot exceed 2 TB for a boot disk when your PC does not have a UEFI BIOS (which the dc7700 doesn't).

2. If the HDD is a SATA III (6.0 GBPS) drive, there is an extremely good chance it has one of the symptoms listed in this HP document below...

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=3718645&docId=emr_na-c02711513&lang=en&c...

I had the same thing happen to me (the first issue listed in the document) on my dc7800 when I installed a new 500 GB WD Caviar Black HDD, SATA III HDD.

W7 did work for a while and then the drive wasn't recognized anymore.

I assumed the drive was defective, so I RMA'd it, and the second one did the exact same thing.

I swapped the 500 GB disk with a 1 TB SATA III disk that came from my 8200 Elite CMT.  The 8200 Elite came from the factory with the 1 TB HDD.  The 8200 Elite's 1 TB HDD worked perfectly fine in my dc7800, and the WD 500 GB disk worked perfectly fine in my 8200 Elite (which has a SATA III HDD controller).

IMO, the drive not being recognized is because of that incompatibility issue outlined in the support document.

For more info regarding drives in excess of 2 TB, please read this HP white paper below.

You should be able to use the 3 TB drive as a data drive if you format it in GPT, provided the incompatibility issue does not exist when it is not being used as a boot drive.

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?sp4ts.oid=3459241&docId=emr_na-c02826744&docLocale...

Interestingly enough, the dc7900 and 8000 Elite PC's I have, do not have that issue with non-HP SATA III hard drives--even though their controllers are only SATA II as well.

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Wow .. I think you might have hit the nail on the head!

Both 1. and 2. are true.  The new disk is a Seagate 3TB NAS drive (http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Cache-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST3000VN000/dp/B00D1GYNU8).

I had a WD 2TB Green in this PC prior to it failing.  That was a SATA III disk too but didn't have any issues.  It was 5 year old when it failed.

Think the non-UEFI BIOS is most likely the main issue.

This PC is our family Media PC (used to run Windows Media Centre under Win7 but with Win 10 I've switched to Kodi) and has 4 DVB-T tuners installed.  I'll have to rethink how we are going to use/configure this machine.

Thanks so much for your quick response Paul.  🙂

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome, John.

The SATA III drive that is currently working in my dc7800 that was originally in my 8200 Elite, is a Seagate ST31000524AS.

Maybe the SATA III drive controller compatibility thing is hit or miss depending on if HP used various brands and models in their PC's.  I doubt they use strictly one model HDD across their business PC lines.  In other words, maybe they equipped some PC's with the WD Green SATA III drives--not necessarily in the 2 GB size but the same model series.

As I wrote above, 2 WD Caviar Black SATA III drives refused to continue working in this dc7800 of mine--and those are nice drives.

It sure had me scratching my head...

You really loaded that dc7700 of yours up!