Using Western Digitial WD50EZRX 5TB drive on Windows 7 Professional 64bit

Hello osprey4

Thanks for suggestion. So right now I am trying to focus on just using the optiplex 990 for the setup. I installed windows 7 pro 64bit using Raid mode in the SATA setup. I followed the Microsoft instructions on how to modify the registry setup to enable reboot using AHCI. and I did update the Intel RST (rapid storage technology) utility to the latest version. I was hoping after the reboot and changing the BIOS to AHCI in the SATA mode it will do the trick but no go so far as Windows will not reboot properly. 

So I believe the AHCI driver was not loaded even after I update the Intel RST. I changed back to RAID mode in bios and was able to get the OS back. 

I have been looking online and I know there is an Intel express chipset AHCI SATA controller driver but I am struggling on how to download and enable it. Please advise. I know I am close but still missing something. Thanks in advance. 

here is what I just tried and awaiting resutls -

By downloading the latest Intel RST it also came with the drivers for AHCI. Since I have some additional spare SATA drive I just tried to changed the bios to AHCI mode in SATA operations and this time I have the AHCI drivers in the USB so I clicked on load drivers before starting the Windows 7 installation on this spare disk with Optiplex 990. I am hoping I have selected the right AHCI driver.

My experience earlier was that without using the load driver options during Windows Installation it will not load AHCI driver somehow (thought there was a windows version but guess it varies by the motherboard) and it will fail around 85% during the installation process.

So if I have a Windows 7 OS installed with AHCI SATA mode I should be able to see the 5TB drive under USB (as an external) or as another SATA secondary ?

Thanks.  

Hello osprey

I think I made the matter way too complicated for my own good. The setup with Win 7 OS in AHCI in SATA failed with my spare hardrive. However, as I went back to using my original drive (installed with RAID in SATA mode) and updated the Intel RST to a even more updated version (2014 version 12.9.4.1000) and plugged this new 5TB drive as a secondary SATA RST finally saw it as 4.68GB (5TB) !!! Wooo hooo

now my second test is if I tried to put it into the USB docking station would it see it still as 5TB external drive. 

Thanks again my friend !!!

Yeah! Good to hear.

Happy new year osprey4

This comes as a very unplesant surprise for me - so as I have been transferring and consolidating 10+ years worth of data from various hard drive into this new 5TB drive in the last 2 weeks this morning I started getting some strange errors during transfer into this new 5TB drive which suggest some directories being corrupted. 

I powered off the optiplex and let it cool off since it has been doing file transfer non-stop for between the drives (all from external USB including this new 5TB drive which I inserted into the docking station). Upon reboot somehow the optiplex no longer recognize this WD 5 TB drive anymore (as an external USB ) and it resorted to being seen as a 4.5GB drive once again with Windows prompting me to format the drive.  The interl RST I updated in Dec also see it as only an unformatted 4GB NTFS drive.

I intiatlly thought this may be a windows update issue and restored to a few days ago and there has been no change in the status. I once again pulled out the DVD-Rom drive and plugged this new 5TB drive in as another secondary SATA drive. 

Upon rebooting Windows asked if I wanted to do chdisk but I was not fast enough to stop the chdisk from starting and my heart skipped a beat when I started seeing deleting millions of orphaned file segment messages across the screen and there was no way I could stop it. With Windows finally started now this secondary SATA drive is seen as another 4GB drive and worst it is now in accessible under windows even thought it sees the drive (and only as 4GB once again)

Do you have any suggestions on how I can possibly recover my years of research data (afraid that  with the evil checkdisk it has removed the files with orphaned files segment deletion) ? ALso why on earth did Windows stop seeing this drive again 5TB ?

//Additional info:

From my current research online I think this problem started when I tried to reboot the PC without proplery disconnect and remove the external drive (5TB) first and hence ruined the boot record or partition table like this post descrbed

http://html5.litten.com/updated-how-to-fix-external-disk-drive-suddenly-became-raw/

However the main difference was I had already allowed chkdisk to runs its course to do the so called repair by deleting the orphan file system segment...now not only did windows not see it as raw 4GB drive but it was also inaccessible as well. 

Right now I am running the testdisk utility in an attempt to recover partition tabe and boot section of the 5TB drive which was inserted back into the external USB docking station.  To my surprise - while Windows and Intel RST did not see the full 5TB drive this free utilitiy is seeing the 5000GB GPT drive.. I am letting it run through its course. Will be a great milestone in my IT career and personal troubleshooting accomplishment if I can get through this mess and restore..

I don't understand why you connected the 5TB drive via USB. I thought it was connected internally via SATA.

In the Optiplex 990 there was only one slot to put in a HD (which was already occupied by 2TB drive) and the 5TB drive I had always intended to use it as an external drive via USB docking station.  The interl RST update only helped me recognize the drive size intially via SATA but as I unplugged and inserted it in the USB docking station it still works as a 5GB drive.

update - the intel RST seems to be seeing it again as 4.6TB and I am still running the utilitiy scan to recover. Most likely CHDSK deleted the orphaned files (the pointers to the files) but I think so long if I have not formatted i can still recover.

Now that I come to think about putting all eggs in one basket I may as well get a NAS or built one.