How to get a WD 5TB MyBook to mount to a ASUS RT-AC66U?

sandeepsoor

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Jan 2, 2016
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It recognizes, but won't mount.

I read that the router will only take up to 4TB and max of 8 partitions, so I formatted it and did a 3TB and a 2TB partition and formatted them NTFS. They both show up when plugged into my laptop, but the router only recognizes the drive, but still, won't mount the primary partition even.

How do I mount it? The whole reason I even bought such a large External (besides that is was ridic cheap on boxing day) was I wanted a media drive to be accessible from all over the house.

Any suggestions? Either how to force a mount, or the best way to format it so it will mount and I can see the multiple partitions?
 
Welcome to the community & Happy New Year, sandeepsoor!

@jsmithepa is right. You might want to consider reformatting your 5 TB WD My Book drive in GPT and see if that will help. Then you should be able to re-partition it again with the same partition sizes. Here you can find a couple of useful links from our knowledge base that will walk you through the procedures:
How to initialize your HDD: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=0j2xV8 (Make sure you select GPT a.k.a. the GUID partition table instead of MBR - the Master Boot Record)
How to partition & format the drive: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=Wr6asN

However, if the router only supports up to 4 TB external drives, it's possible that even the reformatting and re-partitioning won't work. :( Your choices would be to use the WD My Book 5 TB as directly-attached storage to one of your computers or replace the router with a newer model that would be able to support the 5 TB external HDD.

Hope this was helpful. Keep us posted.
SuperSoph_WD
 

sandeepsoor

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Jan 2, 2016
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It's formatted at GPT (I didn't see anywhere for MBR).

I contacted ASUS, and they said regardless of partition size, 4TB is the max. I'm still eager to look for solutions, as the rep from ASUS didn't seem very helpful and only threw copy and paste answers to me.

Is there a way for me to do MBR partitions? I've also tried formating it at above 4096 for byte sectors, read somewhere that that worked for a Seagate.
 
Hey there again, sandeepsoor!

This seems very frustrating! :( There's a way for you to format the 5 TB external in MBR through Disk Management again (using the links from my previous post). However, the maximum storage capacity available would be ~ 2.2 TB due to the MBR's limitations. The Master Boot Record partition table usually works with drives up to 2 TB in size and, unfortunately, it can't handle more than that. Another limitation is that you can have only up to 4 primary MBR partitions.

Either way, it will work with MBR, but keep in mind that you won't be able to use more than half of WD My Book's capacity ( sacrificing ~ 3 TB). You have to decide for yourself if that's worth it.

As for the allocation unit size, it is the block size on your hard drive when it formats NTFS file system. If you have lots of large files, keeping it higher will increase the system capabilities by having less blocks to seek. However, in terms of space efficiency, smaller allocation unit sizes perform better. It's recommended to use the default 4096-byte sector allocation, though.

Let me know how the troubleshooting is going!
SuperSoph_WD