Problems with a 3 TB disk in HP z400

[huhlo]

According to this thread: installing 3tb internal drive in hp z400 , z400 is able to manage disks over the 2.2 TB barrier.

So is my next problem caused by a defective HDD, or may the problem be caused by z400?

I have HP z400 with Windows 7 Pro 64-bit installed, with the most recent BIOS (v03.57). A 3TB disk (Toshiba DT01ACA300) is not a boot disk and operates in AHCI (non-RAID) mode. It behaves this way:

BIOS setup (to be precise: Intel Matrix Storage manager option ROM v8.6.0.1007, dated 2008) shows size of this disk is 746.5 GB.
After Windows 7 starts, I can start the GUI of Intel RST v9.6.0.1014 (the official and most recent storage driver downloaded from HP support pages) and it says size is 2862 GB.
Unfortunately, Disk Managenment in Windows 7 sees only 746 GB.

I tried to format the disk in z400 with GParted of Linux (with a GPT table), and the disk worked "well" in Windows 7 then (I mean I was able to write and read data). It worked well even if I created two partitions and the second one started past the 2,2 TB limit.

But there are two problems remaining:

1) Still Disk Managenment in Windows 7 cannot manage the partitions over 746 GB and claims the size is 746 GB.

2) Windows 7 might damage  some data by placing the 2nd GPT table over (??) :
After I partitioned/formated the disk by GParted, tried Windows, and returned to Linux, GParted said:
"The backup GPT table is not at the end of the disk, as it should be.
This might mean that another operating system believes the disk is smaller."

[huhlo · Accepted solution]

Solved. I needed to replace the Intel RST driver.

Details:

HP offers two drivers here:

http://h20564.www2.hp.com/hpsc/swd/public/readIndex?sp4ts.oid=3912038&swLangOid=8&swEnvOid=4060

Originally I had the newer one, sp65107.exe ( 9.6.0.1014 Rev. A 21 Aug 2013) , but it recognizes 746 GB only. 

Now I installed sp65105.exe ( 11.5.4.1001 Rev. A 18 Apr 2013), which recognizes 2794 GB (full size).

(BIOS still shows 746 GB, but Disk Managenment in Windows 7 shows 2794 GB)

___________________________________________________

Maybe HP should add a more detailed info about differences between these two drivers...

[SDH]

Added tips  HERE on this issue.

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Z800-Max-Disk-Size/...