GA-F2A85XM-D3H issues with installing Win 7 on 3TB hdd

[Nenad15]

I have issues installing Windows 7 on a 3TB hdd.
The configuration:
MB: Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H rev.1.0
Bios: F1
APU: AMD FM2 A5600k
Memory: Patriot 8GB 1333
HDD: WD RED 30EZFRX

I bought this mobo because of its' UEFI in order to have the possibility to boot from my 3TB hdd. With GPARTEd I underlied GPT partition style and partitioned the disk to my needs, all partitions formatted as NTFS.

When trying to install Windows 7 64bit from DVD the installation stopped with the error message "Windows can not be installed on this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style". I tried out every piece of advice that I found on different forums including trying different options with UEFI in the Bios and none helped with the installation.

Finally, I deleted all partitions and let Windows do the trick which brought me 2TB visible disk space and 746Gb unallocated. With the 3TB unlock tool and via virtual disk I got also the 746Gb as usable disk space, but this is all a bad compromise and quite frustrating since I cannot partition the disk to my needs and have a 1TB system partition (I need just a small system partition of 60GB that I can back up to an external hdd).

In different forums I found that some MB manufacturers include UEFI options in Bios that make it possible to normally install Windows 7 on a 3TB hdd. Has anyone run across this problem with Gigabyte mobos and found a solution? Maybe there is some trick in Bios which someone has figured out. Meanwhile I installed F3 version of the Bios but it doesn't offer anything new in the UEFI section.

Please help.

Thanks in advance.

[MegaMouse]

if you have only win 7 32 bit os .. this will be limiation without solution.
using win 7 64bit .. you need to check your boot priority and select uefi dvd-rom as the first priority ..

[Nenad15]

if you have only win 7 32 bit os .. this will be limiation without solution.
using win 7 64bit .. you need to check your boot priority and select uefi dvd-rom as the first priority ..

I have a Win 7 64 bit install DVD, in fact I tried two Win 7 64 install DVDs. Also the boot priority is set to DVD-Rom. The choice uefi-dvd-rom or uefi-hdd as such is not given. I tried with uefi only and uefi first in the uefi sector but the only result is that the system freezes at restart, i.e. hangs at bios boot and shows a black 4:3 cube in the center of the screen while only in the left and right sides showing pieces of the usual bios screen. Quite peculiar. It seems that uefi cannot be loaded in the bios, while uefi and legacy works. Somewhere I am missing something, but not sure what.

[Nenad15]

Problem solved thanks to the Gigabyte support. Actually the whole problem was that I tried with two custom made and actualized WIN 7 install dvds. For some reason you get UEFI only to work with genuine unaltered WIN 7 installation media. One thing yet stayed peculiar - before the installation I simply didn't get the UEFI string for the media, after the installation of WIN 7 the dvd-rom shows up as UEFI-......  A bit strange and confusing but nevermind - problem solved.

And some additional information for whoever may have a similar problem: With Win 7 installation as well as with its' disk management tools you don't get a 3TB hdd partioned as you may need. With 3rd party tools a 3TB GPT hdd can be partioned in whichever way you want.