I’m using a USB drive to backup my existing desktop files, and recently, it began to completely fill up, so yesterday I ordered a new Western Digital 3 TB SATA 3 drive to switch to my uSB drive enclosure. My system is on an M2N^*-AM Plus mobo running OpenSuse 12.3.
I understand that an MBR drive can’t be bigger than 2.2 TB, and that I need to format it as GPT. I have gptfdisk installed, I’ve tried all the partition managers I have, including KDE Partition manager, Parted Magic 5.8 and the latest Parted Magic 2014-04-28. I don’t see how to partition the Hard drive as GPT.
Even the Partition Manager in OpenSuse sees the drive as a 746.52 GB drive, not the about 2800 GB it should be reading. Why can’t it read the size properly?
> I understand that an MBR drive can’t be bigger than 2.2 TB, and that I
> need to format it as GPT. I have gptfdisk installed, I’ve tried all the
> partition managers I have, including KDE Partition manager, Parted Magic
> 5.8 and the latest Parted Magic 2014-04-28. I don’t see how to partition
> the Hard drive as GPT.
I use gparted, no problem at all.
However… if you placed it on the old usb enclosure, it may be possible
that the enclosure chipset doesn’t see the full disk.
>
> Even the Partition Manager in OpenSuse sees the drive as a 746.52 GB
> drive, not the about 2800 GB it should be reading. Why can’t it read the
> size properly?
I’ve been successful with the “gdisk” command (part of gptfdisk). It works just like “fdisk”, except with GPT.
It’s possible that there’s a hardware limitation on your computer, though I would have thought that unlikely.
You might perhaps try rebooting. At one time – I think while running 12.3 – I copied as ISO to an 80G external drive. Thereafter, whenever I plugged in the external drive, it told me that it was 4G. After reboot, it was fine again. I think some wrong information was being cached somewhere.
[QUOTE=nrickert;2644759]I’ve been successful with the “gdisk” command (part of gptfdisk). It works just like “fdisk”, except with GPT.
OK, I’m trying to format a three TB drive, known to the system as /dev/sdc. What command should I use with gdisk? I understand I should be in a terminal window as root.
> I can’t even find a command under gparted to format a gpt drive. Can you
> explain exactly what you did?
Start gparted from a root terminal, then menu Device, create partition
table. I don’t have this moment a hard disk I can risk testing the
procedure and post photos, all my disks are in use.
I fuzzily remember than you have a choice of GPT or MBR types, and maybe
others.
Then, within gdisk, use “n” to create a new partition. You are prompted for information.
Before you try that, use “p” to display the current partition table, and to see what it says about the size of the disk.
Note: I used quotes with “n” and “p”, but do not use those quotes while running “gdisk”.
If you screw up while partitioning, you can use the “q” command to quit without saving any of your changes. I suggest to experiment, and use “q” the first time, just to get the feel of it. To actually save your changes, end with “w” (stands for “write”).
If “gdisk” gives the wrong disk size, then something is amiss, so best to quit without saving and post the partition table info (from the “p” command) here.
Yes, when I get to the p command it gives me this:
gdisk /dev/sdc
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.5
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sdc: 1565565872 sectors, 746.5 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): 9F741E19-CDE2-461E-B7E7-40FC7B58C81C
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1565565838
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 1565565805 sectors (746.5 GiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
Why is the partition aligned on 2048 sector boundaries?
>> If you are sure of that, then I suggest connecting it to a different
>> computer just to see what size it is then (on the different computer).
>
> It is. It doesn’t matter what computer I connect it to (Win XP, Win 7
> OpenSuse 12.3, Opensuse 13.1) it still reads as 746.5 G .
Which points to the enclosure being the problem.
You could try dumping a bunch of zeroes to it, with dd…
> I understand that an MBR drive can’t be bigger than 2.2 TB, and that I
> need to format it as GPT. I have gptfdisk installed, I’ve tried all the
> partition managers I have, including KDE Partition manager, Parted Magic
> 5.8 and the latest Parted Magic 2014-04-28. I don’t see how to partition
> the Hard drive as GPT.
I use gparted, no problem at all.
However… if you placed it on the old usb enclosure, it may be possible
that the enclosure chipset doesn’t see the full disk.
The USB enclosure is a Vantec Nextstar3. The docs say it holds up to a 4 TB drive.
> I can’t even find a command under gparted to format a gpt drive. Can you
> explain exactly what you did?
Start gparted from a root terminal, then menu Device, create partition
table. I don’t have this moment a hard disk I can risk testing the
procedure and post photos, all my disks are in use.
I fuzzily remember than you have a choice of GPT or MBR types, and maybe
others.
Root terminal? On my computer Gparted is a GUI I start from applications/systems/file system/partition editor. Is the GUI version different from the command line version?
>> If you are sure of that, then I suggest connecting it to a different
>> computer just to see what size it is then (on the different computer).
>
> It is. It doesn’t matter what computer I connect it to (Win XP, Win 7
> OpenSuse 12.3, Opensuse 13.1) it still reads as 746.5 G .
Which points to the enclosure being the problem.
You could try dumping a bunch of zeroes to it, with dd…
I’ve done that with the clean command from a Windows machine.
The drive comes up as not allocated after doing this, but still the wrong size.
I have just discovered the hard way that one of my "USB to SATA/IDE cable converters"will handle my new 3.0TB disk, and one will not. So I believe that some USB/SATA chips handle very large disks and some do not. The converter that did not work correctly gave the disk size as 730 GiB or something like that – symptoms that look very much like the original poster’s.
I have not attempted to do any real diagnosis, but looking in /var/log/messages, I see the line:
Aug 17 18:15:36 hobgoblin kernel: 7117.367255] sd 11:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
so it appears that for really large disks, the system has to use a different command to the disk. Perhaps some chipsets do not handle this command correctly.
On 2014-08-17 21:06, worley1517 wrote:
>
> I have just discovered the hard way that one of my “USB to SATA/IDE
> cable converters”-will- handle my new 3.0TB disk, and one -will not-.
> So I believe that some USB/SATA chips handle very large disks and some
> do not. The converter that did not work correctly gave the disk size as
> 730 GiB or something like that – symptoms that look very much like the
> original poster’s.
Yes, very possibly. And before the current 3 TB disks, there were other
sizes that some usb chipsets did not see.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)