Ok, so I've tried pretty much everything.
Originally I was having a problem formatting drive in Windows. I went with MBR for simplicity and split the drive into 2 partitions. Problem is that when windows went to format drive in disk management, it would always come back with "Unable to complete" and then afterward the drive would disappear out of windows, and getting it back required shutting down (not restarting, shutting down and then pressing power button to start up again).
In Linux I was able to format the drive to full size (using GPT instead of MBR), so I thought maybe I was good and rebooted to windows, but the problem at that point was that when I was copying files to the partition, the transfer stopped a couple of minutes in and the drive disappeared just like before.
Then I tried updating BIOS since I read that BIOS may not support 3TB, and sure enough, looking at Gigabyte website 3TB support was added in the FG version, so I downloaded the FH update to get all the way up to date. (This is a X58A-UD3R)
I still had the same problem formatting in Windows as before.
Then I read that maybe turning on AHCI would work, so I enabled it for the part of the mainboard controller I'm currently using (SATA channel 7).
I guess I can try one more time to see if I can get SATA channel 0-3 as I think that's on an entirely different chipset but I'm doubtful this will make it successful.
I tried formatting using diskpart and received the error "The parameter is incorrect." whatever the heck that means.
The event log says things like
"The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort9"
And
"The device, \Device\Harddisk2\DR2, is not ready for access yet." which I believe corresponds with the timing of the error.
Since this might be a controller error, I'm going to attempt to use the other ports so I'm on a different controller as a last ditch effort. I'll report back on success.
