Initializing an external 3.0 tb USB hard drive fails

Have you tried taking USB out of the equation and connecting it as a 2nd internal drive?

I think the issue is with your caddy, it may not support a 3 TB drive.

Try to uninstall the drivers from device manager and let it reinstall xD

What format is the drive?  GPT?
NTFS strikes out about 2.2TB, check here for more info:
http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/218619en

Let me answer the comments posted so far.

I know it's not the caddy because I have several discs and they all work with USB3 except this one. That being said, I tried it with a USB2 port - same result.

Taking the caddy out of the loop not possible for me as I'm on a laptop and this drive is to big (physically).

I tried both formats (GPT and NTFS). Both fail, producing the error message previously described.

The last comment I've not yet tried but will today and post the result.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

It can still be the caddy. USB devices are often short on power, particularly if they don't have an additional power supply attached to the mains. Your 3TB drive could be drawing more power than your other disks and so you are only noticing it with that particular one.

The caddy I'm using (pluggable) has it's own power supply so I wouldn't think it would be an "insufficient power" issue. Wouldn't you agree?

Insofar as the cmd prompt suggestion, the commands in the beginning work fine. When I get to the line "Create partition primary", I get the same error message described earlier.

It's still possible that the powersupply of the caddy is too low powered. Those are very often very cheap supplies which don't have a very high wattage, and they also have a big tolerance, so you don't necessarily get what it tells you it delivers on the label.

"It's still possible that the power supply of the caddy is too low powered". So what do you suggest? I don't have a desk top computer, just a laptop so the drive won't fit

Find someone who does have a desktop PC. If the disk works properly on that desktop PC, first still scan it by using it's manufacturer's diagnostic, and if that is fine, try using it again with another caddy.

can you test other drives on this caddy?

Yes. I have 9 drives total (I'm a big movie buff). They all work in this caddie (same mfg and size as this one) except for this one.

ok - are there amongst the 9 other 3 TB drives? that would show if the drive or caddy is the problem
if you don't have others - post the caddy model

Only 1 is a 1 TB drive, the rest are 3 TB

and- what model is the caddy?

With these suggestions I think I've exhausted all attempts to determine if the drive is at fault or not and come to the conclusion (sadly), it must be.

Thanks everyone for the help. Please understand it was difficult for me on this question to determine who is the most deserving of the points.