Hello everybody,

First time here. A friend of mine recommended me this forum.

I did a search, but maybe I'm not too bright, but I couldn't find anything related to my situation.

This is my last attempt before sending this HD it to a trustable service... or throwing it

Seven years ago I bought a Barracuda 3TB st3000dm008. SN/z59q2k (If my eyes don't fail)

I have only used as an external drive via an USB StarTech dock (note: the dock felt to the floor six years ago; the only visible damage was the mobile plastic which covers the slot).

My Main HD (1tb, bought 2 o 3 years ago) has much more hours of use than the Barracuda.

That one has very few hours of use, only as a) backup (files thankfully copied into other, smaller HDs) b) Hi-Res audio and c) Movies/Series.

The Trouble: November last year, I got a "file not found" when opening a random file. A few minutes later, I couldn't access to any file. Since I didn't have a bigger HD, recovery programs were pointless.

Well, I did a quick format (I ALWAYS used W7 as an OS, never needed to make a partition of the 3TB; always recognized them). I continued using it as always. Come January, I was stupid enough to unplug the USB just a second before "Now it's safe to remove the hardware". The same problem appeared.

Third issue: March or April. Without any kind of wrong movement, the same happened again, BUT, this time, it only recognizes the infamous 746 GB, instead of 2, let alone 3 Teras.

The Win7 diskmanager or any other app (like diskpart or any commercial one -shareware versions, but it doesn't seem that the paid one would be what I'm looking for) only list 746. I didn't bother to copy any file there.

I took it -dock included- to a computer with Win10, and it was exactly the same. 746 GB, no any alternative.

It goes without saying that softwaer like DiskCheckup or CrystalDiskInfo can't find ANYTHING WRONG with it now or before the 746 GB debacle. Not any kind of data or mechanical issues at all.

Yes, my file system is and always was GPT.

Right now, the only thing I can think about doing by myself is to skipt the dock and the USB, and connect the Seagate via SATA directly to the motherboard and try to perform a Low Level Format, with software yet to be decided.

(That Mother is a Gigabyte F2A68HM-M of 9, 10 years. Years ago used to plug two different HDs to it without any trouble, but the Mother started to act funny, like it wouldn't take a high quality power source - yet, no service could find anything wrong with the mother),

Guess this is a case of trial and error:
The USB port and cable works for other stuff.
The dock worked for other HDs (used for very short time, just to update backups)
I even thought that maybe the dock's cable (not the same design at the masculine end that the cables here in Argentina, so I had to try a couple of adapters masculine-female-masculine to discard any issue with them) was making false contact.
So, I can't think of anything else but to connecting to the motherboard and try a LLF....

But... I'm open to any kind of suggestions, maybe I've overlooked something.

In advance, thank you very much. A lot

-Pablo

Your dock has a 32-bit LBA limitation.

3TB - 2TiB = 746GiB

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

But I've been using the same dock, the same HD and the same 64-bit W7 for years... That's what baffles me.

I suspect that you partitioned and formatted the drive via SATA. When the drive was in the dock, your OS probably saw the 3TB partition table and didn't bother checking the actual capacity reported by the drive. Currently you have no partition table, so the OS needs to ask the drive.

In fact, you were living with a time bomb. As soon as you wrote any data beyond the 2TiB limit, the LBAs would have wrapped to sector 0 and corrupted your file system.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Actually, I never partitioned or formatted the drive via SATA. I put it the dock way back in 2017, W7 recognized it as a 3 TB external via USB. When the problems appeared, the setup was exactly the same.

What capacity do you see with CrystalDiskInfo?

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskinfo/

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Crystal Disk always said 3 TB

(02) ST3000DM008-2DM166
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enclosure : Generic External USB Device (V=13FD, P=1840, sa1)
Model : ST3000DM008-2DM166
Firmware : CC26
Serial Number : Z504Q42K
Disk Size : 3000,5 GB (8,4/137,4/3000,5/801,5)
Buffer Size : Unknown
Queue Depth : 32
# of Sectors : 5860533168
Rotation Rate : 7200 RPM
Interface : USB (Serial ATA)
Major Version : ACS-2
Minor Version : ACS-3 Revision 3b
Transfer Mode : SATA/150 | SATA/600
Power On Hours : 1447 hours
Power On Count : 447 count
Temperature : 23 C (73 F)
Health Status : Good
Features : S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ, GPL
APM Level : 8080h [ON]
AAM Level : ----
Drive Letter :

But Disk Checkup says 746

And neither W7 or Diskpart recognize it. I'm embarrassed. I haven't try to fix this in my own computer in the last couple of months, can't remember how W7 reacted then. But I do know that less than a month ago, a laptop with W10 recognized it, and gave it 746.

Hello. Trying to reopen this, in case someone can help.
Yesterday I tried the HDD Low Level Format v. 4.0, to no avail.

There is nothing wrong with your HDD.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

But then, how can I restore the 3 TB size?

Throw away your old dock and buy a new one.

_________________
A backup a day keeps DR away.

Thanks, Man.

I did the low level format again, but with the disc connected straight to the motherboard via SATA.

Now it's restored.

A friend of mine had suggested me to do that and also to visit this forum. Guess I should have started from the first thing...