My Windows 7 laptop only sees 2TB of a 4TB hard drive connected via docking station and e-sata cable

[jamminjim]

The Problem:
For my Pavilion DV7-2277cl, I tried to install a new Western Digital 4TB bare 3.5" hard disk drive (WD40EZAZ) as an external non-bootable hard-drive using a Thermaltake BlacX Docking station (ST0005U) and and e-sata cable. Windows DiskManager was able to see the hard drive but it required initialization. I initialized it with GPT style partitioning, but the result was that it only showed 2TB of unallocated space for formatting. Western digital assures me that this drive is Window 7 ready and that all 4 terabytes of this drive should be recognized. Although this is an older model docking station, Thermaltake support believes that that is not a limitation of the docking station and that upgrading to a newer model would not likely help. Since my Windows 7, Home premium 64-bit service pack 1 is not as updated as possilbe (my updates ended when the automatic update program began failing in spring 2016); the consensus at Thermaltake support is that adding the updates associated with the 2016 windows 7 "roll-up" might solve the problem. I may consider this experiment, but only very reluctantly and carefully because I'm afraid of bricking my old computer (one of the reasons for trying to add the external hard drive was to back up all my data - my life is essentially on that laptop and I can't afford another computer at this time).

Possilbe solutions:
1) Even though Western Digital has tested this hard drive with windows 7, they only did so as an internal drive. Could the problem be a limitation of the e-sata port on my computer? Might a USB (2.0) connection work better? Or is it hopeless as an external drive for this laptop?

2) In reading the Microsoft article "Windows support for hard disks that are larger than 2 TB" (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/support-for-hard-di...), it appears that the drive should be supported in full in Windows 7. But they emphasize the importance of having updated Storage Management Drivers. I think this might be the most likely problem/solution (and maybe even more so since I'm trying to use this as an external drive). That might bring me back to Thermaltake's suggestion of adding the more recent Window's 7 updates - but those don't include device drivers do they? Maybe it would be more to the point to directly update the mass storage management driver(s), but since my computer is no longer supported by HP I don't have any idea how I might do that.

My questions:

1) Would updating the mass storage management drivers help and if so can anyone tell me how that should be done?

2) Would adding more recent updates to my windows 7 service pack 1 likely help?

3) Any other ideas regarding possible causes and solutions would be greatly appreciated.

thank you in advance for any thoughts.