Using Win7 Home Premium SP1 64bit, P55 FTW with A72 BIOS, Windows only recognizes 746GB of the 3TB Hitachi H3IK30003272SW hard drive. This is using GPT partition type.
 
Win 7 SP1 is supposed to already contain hotfix 982018 for advanced format disks with 4k sector sizes.
 
I don't want to boot from the drive, just use it as a backup area. Is there any driver or BIOS config that will give access to all 3TB on 64-bit Win7 and P55 FTW with A72 BIOS?
 
Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit
EVGA 55 FTW, A72 BIOS,  i7-860 @ 2.8 Ghz, 8GB DDR3 RAM
Boot drive: 300 GB Velociraptor
Data drive RAID 0, 2 x 1.5 TB Seagate

This will be an increasingly common situation now that 3TB drives are widely available.
 
We need some direction from EVGA engineering about what motherboards and BIOS versions support 3TB drives and the specific BIOS config to achieve this. 
 
It doesn't appear to be a Windows issue but a drive & BIOS issue, as my P55 FTW's A72 BIOS reports only 746GB, not 3TB.

I posted on Windows social.answers at MS anyway, just in case.  It does seem to be a BIOS /BIOS COnfig problem though. 

i  not sure is a limitation of WIN home ?
in bios you have the correct size ?

cateno

i  not sure is a limitation of WIN home ?
in bios you have the correct size ?

It's not a limitation of 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. I have a 2 x 1.5TB (3TB logical drive) RAID0 array which works fine. Windows sees it as a 3TB logical drive.
With the Hitachi 3TB drive, the A72 BIOS doesn't see the right size -- only 746GB out of 3TB. It's apparently a problem with BIOS/drive communication, not an OS-layer issue.
My RAID drive forces me to use "Configure SATA as RAID" in BIOS. It is conceivable that using AHCI or some other BIOS settings might allow the P55 FTW motherboard to properly size the 3TB Hitachi drive. Once that's done it would probably work in Win7, if using 64-bit and using GPT partition type.
 
However changing from RAID to AHCI in "Configure SATA as" would make my machine non-bootable, even though I don't boot from the RAID drive.
So there are two issues here (both involve using 3TB as a data drive, not boot drive):
(1) Whether the new 3TB drives can work with the P55 FTW and A72 BIOS, using any settings whatsoever, even if it requires a total reformat and OS reinstall.
(2) If you're already using "Configure SATA as RAID", or "Configure SATA as IDE", can you add a 3TB drive without re-installing the OS.
I think there are separate disk controllers which could be used, but I was looking for a solution without a controller.
If a controller is required, which one should be used for the Hitachi 3TB drive and P55 FTW mobo?

Well it would seem a quick email or PM to EVGA tech support would be in order.  The link below on my posts shows most of the Techs

 
EVGA product managers are here they have read this post, but they will do nothing!!!
 
THIS is a big issue!!! I don't know what they are thinking!!

Well I don't know if this will help you or not, but there is an article on the Seagate site describing a scenario similar to yours where the Windows operating system sees a 3TB drive as 746GB as you've stated.  The article states you may have some luck using an updated driver from Intel and provides a link to download. 
 
[link=http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=218615&NewLang=en]http://seagate.custkb.com...=218615&NewLang=en[/link]
 
Good luck.

you  use 2 1,5T for one logical drive here is one 3T physical drive
on my all X58 my drive 3T all ok and bootable drive when i have time I test on my P55 classified  and I use  WIN7 ultimate 64b , for  test I use w7 home and make a report
just need time

Cateno is correct, here is what Intel says on Intel Rapid Storage Technology :
For disk drives beyond 2.2TB, the proper level of Intel RST driver should be v10.1 or higher. If your system uses an earlier version you can update the driver by following the update instruction on the Intel RST support website. The Intel support website has tools that automatically check Intel device drivers.

KenMcC
What Intel says...For disk drives beyond 2.2TB, the proper level of Intel RST driver should be v10.1 or higher. 

Thanks for the response, but as you stated earlier, this particular problem seems to be a BIOS & hard drive issue, not up at the device driver layer. If only 746GB is identified by A72 BIOS on P55 FTW, at a minimum the problem starts there. Maybe both BIOS and device driver enmancements are needed.
 
Thanks for the link, I'll check that out.

other solution buy a sata 3 pcie card and boot on this  you have 3T
 
i have just tried the 3T and my bios just 785gb
 
on the card SATA3 i have  3T and bootable card is ASUS U3S6
 
no tried to install win home 7 no time for this
 
if bios update to read the hd 3T is the solution after

Look Sorry on the link not being the 1 I wanted to post.  I found a formal description on Intel.  The doc. had pictures which showed that the 9.6.x.x drivers presented to Win 7 x64 only 768 MB that were at the END of the Partition and skipped the first 2.2 TB.  The 10.1.0.1008 Intel RST driver fixes this problem only for x64 OSs. I will look again on both Google and Intel as I don't remember what I used as the search keys. 

if bios just detect the 742gb is not possible to look the rest with windows for a extended partition
2 Solutions
first EVGA make bios upgrade for skip the limitation 2T is possible ASUS and others is done
two addon a sata3 card and boot with this ( bios in sata3 ready for 3T ) this option need to search driver SATA3 at the install win7
on usb key is fine

cateno
if bios just detect the 742gb is not possible to look the rest with windows for a extended partition...

That also was my initial thought. However unlike the original IBM PC (which had executable BIOS code called by the operating system), modern BIOSes don't have this. They don't contain the memory control structures to allow a protect-mode OS like Windows to call the BIOS as a I/O subroutine.
Instead the BIOS provides data and configuration which the OS can interrogate about h/w status, maybe only a boot time. In theory if the driver layer knew the exact h/w it wouldn't need BIOS at all. I think that's what KenMcC is saying: the P55 uses Intel RAID chipset, so an Win7-compatible Intel disk driver can disregard what BIOS says and communicate with the on-board disk controller.
 
I don't have time to test it right now, as such tests can result in a non-bootable system and force a restore from backups. You always have to be prepared for that -- it's not the test time but the worst-case recovery time that's a factor. However I'll try to test the new driver next week on the Hitachi 3TB drive.

Cateno, though I respect your input why do both Intel and Seagate say it is a driver issue?  look at this Seagate Link and it says as I said about using the 10.1.0.1008 drivers.  This should acording to both vendors work with Single non-bootable drives over 2.2 TB.  It does Not work with RAID 0 drives over 2.2 TB, for the RAID 0 to work over 2.2 TB you must have the BIOS fix.   
Link : http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=218615&NewLang=en 

your link is good only for 32bit os ,if bios not read 3T in os not show or install the perfect size,  is bios issue upgrade
on my P55 classified have a test 2T bios ok , 3T bios show 746gb
 

Look man, No 32 bit OS can ever use drives of 3 TB as they use more bits for mapping.  That is why the link is ONLY for x64 systems. 

your link go to  seagate and seagate  link to intel RST page
 
for me the hd up to 1T is just for storage no for system better is one SSD or disk 500Gb max ideal WD velociraptor 600gb 10000rpm

That section also has x64 stuff.  now here's another part of that area
Intel has just updated its Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers. In comparison to version 9.6, these drivers now support Long LBA type addressing which is required to support drives of over 2.2 TB. Up until now, the Intel drivers weren’t compatible with Long LBA addressing and we had to make do with the generic Microsoft drivers in AHCI mode. Note however that this support is currently limited to AHCI mode. We’ll have to wait for a future version for RAID support.

To recap, going beyond 2.2 TB poses compatibility problems as you have to go from LBA type addressing to Long-LBA and MBR partitioning has to be abandoned for GPT. In terms of the system disk, this makes it necessary to have a recent 64-bit OS as well as a motherboard with an EFI type bios so that Windows can boot on this GPT partition.

Alright.  Here are my findings from my installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 this week:
Relevant Equipment:
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe Nforce 4 Motherboard
(1) X Western Digital 320GB 2.5" Laptop Hard Drive (boot drive)
(3) X Seagate Barracuda XT 3TB Hard Drives
(2) X Seagate Barracuda LP 1.5TB Hard Drives (these are full of data from a previous server install)
 
Let me start off by saying that the BIOS only recognizes 746GB of the 3TB hard drives.  All other hard drives are recognized correctly.
On first install, everything went fine.  In Windows, all hard drives were recognized by their correct sizes, (e.g. 1.5TB as 1.5TB, and 3TB as 3TB).
I used the system very little at first, mainly just setting up drivers, server services, and other programs.  All drives showed up correctly.  Until I installed the Nvidia Nforce drivers.  After reboot, everything seemed to be fine.  No error messages to tell me that something was borked.  It wasn't until I started to transfer data from the old 1.5TB hard drives to the new 3TB hard drives.  First, the system just slowed down horrendously and then eventually it was so bad as to be basically frozen.  I thought maybe I had a bad hard drive.  It happens.  So I decided to remove one of the 1.5TB hard drives from the system temporarily, to narrow the problem down.  After I rebooted, I tried copying from the other 1.5TB hard drive to one of the other 3TB hard drives.  This time it did not freeze, but I started receiving the following error:
"Error 0x80070450 Request could not be performed because of an I/O device error."
OK.  Now this is getting strange.
So, to further narrow the problem down, I removed the second 1.5TB hard drive and rebooted.  I decided to try to copy things among the 3TB hard drives, to test those out individually, apart from the older 1.5TB hard drives.  But when I tried to do this, I finally noticed that one of the 3TB hard drives no longer had a drive label, nor a size next to it.  When I double-clicked it, Windows asked me if I would like to format the drive.  Um, no.  I right-clicked on the drive and checked the properties.  Lo and behold, it was showing up as a 746GB hard drive in Windows.  At this point, I realized that the last change I had made was to install the Nvidia SATA drivers.  So, I uninstalled them, and rolled-back the drivers in device manager, rebooted, and now all seems to be great. 
To sum up:
BIOS shows 746GB.
Windows (with Microsoft IDE driver) shows 3TB and works fine.
Windows (with Nvidia SATA driver) gives multiple issues, including these:
a. Hard drive no longer recognized as formatted.
b. Slow-downs and freezes when copying files.
c. I/O errors when copying.
 
THREE different symptoms, ONE problem: those darn Nvidia drivers.
 
butta86

Going back ... my stupid question does diskmgmt.msc show the drive?  can be found by typing it in run or start or via Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Computer Management\Disk Manager
 
 From here, you should see the rogue drive. Right-clicked on the drive that isn't showing up, select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" and then hit the Add button. From there, select "S" - as it's a storage drive.
Perhaps this will help