3TB on MBR not GPT

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reijin2409

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Jul 30, 2013
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Ok, guys im reading some articles in the web about GPT and MBR. From what I've learned, MBR can only have 2tb and the rest of the memory space, will be another allocation, and they wouldnt be in 1 partition. But in my case. I had an External HDD and it is in Partition style MBR and got its 3TB without any partitioning.


screengrab

Question: How was this possible? Is it because its an External HDD?
 
Solution
Your mixing the concept of internal drives and ext devices up.

You are absolutely correct, if you bought from WD / anyone a greater than 2GB drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table) due to how a set of bits is stored PHYCICALLY on the platter, in 512k allotments. Physically the media can't hold anymore then that to fit in that space on those sized platters. Even with the 'vertical' instead of 'horizontal' storage method (writing data from the center of the platter to the edge of the 'disk' verses a circle along the edge, then pulling in one 'row' and start again) which helped break the 100GB barrier, there is still a physical limitation, and huge amount of 'waste' committed when trying to store data (storing 520K...
Your mixing the concept of internal drives and ext devices up.

You are absolutely correct, if you bought from WD / anyone a greater than 2GB drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table) due to how a set of bits is stored PHYCICALLY on the platter, in 512k allotments. Physically the media can't hold anymore then that to fit in that space on those sized platters. Even with the 'vertical' instead of 'horizontal' storage method (writing data from the center of the platter to the edge of the 'disk' verses a circle along the edge, then pulling in one 'row' and start again) which helped break the 100GB barrier, there is still a physical limitation, and huge amount of 'waste' committed when trying to store data (storing 520K of bits requires 1024 or two 512k segments).
GPT is a new method, where the platter isn't just "formatted" into 4K segments, but actually the chipsets on the HDD media itself manage this on the HDD itself and thus only works if you have UEFI instead of BIOS, as this is the hardware layer (7 Layer OSI model) communication. As noted by even EaseUS http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/GPT-disk-partition-manager/partition-gpt-disk.htm which discusses the same things.

So one way to 'circumvent' this for people wanting greater than 2TB but may be on older legacy OSes (XP/VISTA) would be to wrap this drive inside of a USB case, add the necessary hardware for a USB case based UEFI, then run a converter to the USB interface to make it "lowest common denominator' MBR, as in your case. The USB Interface 'reports' the most common (XP/Vista) compatible method, while realistically onboard the chips inside the USB case is a UEFI and GPT table management (not only drivers on one partition of the drive, but actual 'BIOS' you update) that handle the actual drive itself. If you removed the drive and attempted to plug it into a BIOS based PC internal connection (not possible BTW, as USB 3.0 interface is actually soldered onto the drives :-( ) to your SATA III connection you would have the issue of the drive being unrecognized till its partition segments were wiped then reformatted and again limitations persist, only maximum of 2.2TB.
 
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