I just put a Western Digital Caviar Green (WD30EZRX) 3TB SATA3 6Gb/s 64MB (OEM) hard drive into a LaCie d2 Quadra eSATA 3Gb/s | USB 2.0 | FireWire 400 & 800 housing that used to have a 1.5TB Seagate HD in it.

The problem is that the Mac is only seeing a 801.23GB disc with 800.59 free.

Was there something that I should done during the swap? Or am I out of luck and will have to purchase a compatible housing for the WD?

The Seagate HD was starting to have I/0 errors.

This was the second Lacie (Seagate HD) to die in the last four months.

No more Lacie for me. XX)

With Lacie I would tend to question whether the issue was with the Housing, Power Supply, HD, or was a combination whammy. Reliability and Lacie have not been synonymous over the past few years.

Your D2 is not compatible with drives larger than 3TB
The firmware cannot handle the advanced formatting with large blocks.
The MacAlly G-S350 series enclosures we have tested to be compatible with 3 and 4 TB drives

I take it that since I require Firewire 800, this model enclosure would be the correct one for the 3TB WD?

MacAlly 3.5in SATA to eSATA / USB 2.0 / Firewire 800 Aluminum Enclosure, Daisy-chain connection. Uses the Oxford chipset 934DSB. 3.5 External SATA/USB USB2.0/FW800/ESATA Enclosure 1 Yr Warranty G-S350SUAB2 for $110.00.

Not doubting CanadaRAM's excellent knowledge and advice, and I'm sure not a fan nor an advocate of any Lacie drives, but their LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk eSATA 3Gb/s | USB 2.0 | FireWire 400 & 800 model seems to have a 3TB option, or are they using different firmware or some different bridge circuitry within the 3TB LaCie model?

LaCie - LaCie d2 Quadra USB 3.0 (http://www.lacie.com/ca/products/product.htm?id=10554)

What I also got to thinking. This is my model.

LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk eSATA 3Gb/s | USB 2.0 | FireWire 400 & 800 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB, 750GB, 2TB, 3 TB, 1TB 5400rpm, 2TB 5400rpm, 3TB v2b.

LaCie - LaCie d2 Quadra Hard Disk (http://www.lacie.com/ca/support/support_manifest.htm?pid=11166)

I'll throw the WD into a dock later and see if the Mac sees 3TB.

The models they ship now with 3 TB drives may well have different firmware or SATA / FW controllers than the older D2 models.

Based on the symptoms (800 GB instead of 3 TB) the individual enclosure being used is not compatible.

You can contact LaCie to see if there is a possibility of a firmware upgrade that would fix it. Not possible though if the incompatibility is in the hardware controller.

The MacAlly FW800 enclosure we have tested with 3 TB drives, yes.

So it likely the Mac only sees 800GB instead of 3TB, even though the enclosure previously held a 1.5TB HD, all because of firmware?

Before giving up hope have you erased and repartitioned the drive in Disk Utility? I haven't seen your issue on a large drive but I've come across it a lot with small thumb drives.

Okay.

I just started writing zeros to it with Disk Utility.

Two hours to go.

Oops!

Now three hours.

Partitioning and doing just doing a single zero out pass in an "unsupported" 3TB enclosure, I would suggest will take about at least 12 hours if not a day or so.

Edit: Maybe just follow CanadaRAM's suggestion and buy an external enclosure that actually works with 3TB drives, and buy a smaller replacement smaller capacity TB drive for the Lacie that will work - and at it's full rated capacity.

agreed. google "3TB drive enclosure" or something similar. you'll see its a fairly common issue with older enclosures.

none of my macally boxes will recognize 3TB drives

I put the hard drive into a dock and tried it out on my Sony laptop with Windows 7 Pro.

This is what is displayed for Disk 1.

200MB Healthy (EFI System Partition)
746.20GB Healthy (Primary Partition)
2048.13GB Unallocated

What does this all mean?

I'm not that great with Windows and PCs.

I also tried the hard drive and dock combo on both my Intel Mac desktop with Snow Leopard and a 7 year old or so, iBook with Tiger. There was absolutely no sign of the hard drive or dock on either Mac. Nothing shown in About This Mac, Disk Utility, TT Pro 6, or Drive Genius 3.

Anyway, I bit the bullet and ordered an enclosure from Canada Ram.

Hopefully this will get that WD HD, up and running.

I put the hard drive into a dock and tried it out on my Sony laptop with Windows 7 Pro.

This is what is displayed for Disk 1.

200MB Healthy (EFI System Partition)
746.20GB Healthy (Primary Partition)
2048.13GB Unallocated

What does this all mean?
I'm not that great with Windows and PCs.

I also tried the hard drive and dock combo on both my Intel Mac desktop with Snow Leopard and a 7 year old or so, iBook with Tiger. There was absolutely no sign of the hard drive or dock on either Mac. Nothing shown in About This Mac, Disk Utility, TT Pro 6, or Drive Genius 3.

It means that the drive was partitioned, but only with a 750 GB partition (which is the common behaviour of an incompatible interface). The rest of the drive is presently unused. You could try deleting the partitions on the Sony and repartitioning it.

The dock is also probably incompatible with large sector (Advanced format) drives.

Before anyone asks, partitioning a large drive into two 1.5 TB partitions will not make it work in an incompatible enclosure (or a PC) which has a 2 TB limitation. Its not the size of the partition that matters, but the size of the sectors on the hard drive - which is unchanged by partitioning it.

MacAlly enclosures manufactured prior to 2012 are likely to be incompatible. There is a firmware upgrade procedure BUT it can only be done from a 32-bit Windows PC (and not 64-bit Windows or Windows in a Virtual environment)

Support - Macally Peripherals (http://www.macally.com/EN/?page_id=23)

"Attention: 3TB/4TB, large capacity HDD users. If you want to use 3TB or 4TB hard drives in Macally enclosure models PHR-S100SUA, G-S350SU, G-S350SUA, G-S350SUAB and G-S350SUAB2, please read this.

You are recommended to test 3TB/4TB hard drive with above listed Macally enclosure models first. In case your computer (64-bit Windows XP/Vista/7 and MacOS X 10.4/10.5/10.6/10.7 required) could not recognize full capacity of the hard drive, you might have an enclosure purchased before year 2012 or with an old firmware. If so, you may follow the instructions below to upgrade the enclosure firmware.
Please note the 3TB Firmware Upgrade Tools are designed to operate exclusively on Windows 32-bit Operating System machines, i.e. Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.
Mac OS, Virtual Windows OS machine or Linux may not support such program. BootCamp with 32 bit Windows OS is the only alternate choice for Mac user for firmware upgrade.

Firmware Upgrade Steps:

Firstly, please verify if JAVA has been installed and up-to-date in your Windows system. If not, please go to Download Free Java Software (http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp) to install the updated Java application.

Secondly, run the exe. file to install the firmware upgrade program- “Oxemi Uploader” and refer to the pdf instruction named “update configuration guide” in the downloaded folder and follow the instruction to change the configuration file in Oxemi Uploader until it is accomplished 100%.

Thirdly: close Oxemi Uploader and re-open it and click Upload/Upgrade Firmware and browse for the .bin file from the download package and to initiate firmware upgrade process. When the firmware upgrade progress reach 100%, you may close the program and connect 3TB hard disk enclosure to Windows PC or Apple Mac to format and 3TB hard disk would be able to fully utilized.

Note: Windows XP OS can not identify full 3TB disk, even if the firmware has been upgraded successfully, due to the Windows XP design flaw. Windows Vista and 7 and all version of

Macally PHR-100SU (New Version) supports 3TB hard disk without any firmware upgrade.

Instruction and firmware utility package download links:

MODEL: G-S350SU http://www.macally.com/EN/techsupport/drivers/GS350SUfw.zip

MODELS: PHR-S100SUA /G-S350SUA /G-S350SUAB
http://www.macally.com/EN/techsupport/drivers/PHRS100SUA_GS350SUA_GS350SUABfw.zip

MODEL: G-S350SUAB2 http://www.macally.com/EN/techsupport/drivers/GS350SUAB2fw.zip
"