3TB's Partitioned As NTFS With MBR Out There?

[Big_Al_C]

Guys,

Windows 7 Pro SP1 64-Bit with an ASRock P67 PRO3 (B3) MoBo

that has a UEFI BIOS, i5-2500K and Corsair Vengeance 16 Gigs.


My C, D and E partitions are on a 120 GB NTFS SSD with a MBR.

My present STORAGE HDD is a 2TB Toshiba with a MBR.


I recently purchased a Toshiba PH3300U-1I72 3TB to replace the 2TB.


I always Ghost with DOS Bootable CDs I make with custom

Autoexec.bat files I write, never Windows.

I found out from Symantec that Ghost has issues with GPT.


I found a way to make my 3TB FULLY accessible and set as MBR.

It's Acronis True Image, aka Seagates DiskWizard aka WD's version

of DiskWizard. It puts an "Extended Capacity Manager" in the boot

sector so you get one 2.1TB and one 700+GB partition, BOTH MBR.

See: Seagate DiscWizard CloneDisc for drives larger than 3TB_Part-2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCLGfj1LSmI


The reason that I'm posting this is to get feedback from anyone who

has used these programs to see if the 3TBers work as any other HDD

would or are there any quirks that have come up since partitioning

your 3TB?

Please post to me.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Big Al

 

[VirtualLarry]

I don't believe that Windows supports 4K native sectors, at least I don't know of any way to use them, on drives that support 512e sectors as well.

USB enclosures are a different story. Those that support 3TB, work with XP, and don't use GPT, are using 4K sectors over USB.

 

[Big_Al_C]

Guys,

I just found this and would like some input before opening the

Toshiba 3TB's box:

Make SURE the 3TB is EMPTY as this will wipe ALL data on the drive

To make a fully accessible 3TB with 4k sector:


1. Boot to desktop.

2. Open "My Computer" in Windows Explorer.

3. Click on the EMPTY 3TB HDD.

4. If the factory made some partitions on it, delete them all.

5. Once it is just one disk, right-click it and click "Format"

6. Select "4096", "NTFS" and "Format".

7. Click OK. Since the 3TB is EMPTY, it should be real quick.

8. It's now ready to be partitioned to your liking up to 2.7 or so

TB's total and is set as MBR.

Big Al

 

[Cerb]

I would start by finding a backup utility that worked. Then, all you'd need to do is make sure your motherboard is set to EUFI-first booting, and then install Windows 64-bit to the new drive (which you might be able to do for free w/ EaseUS, without re-installing). Acronis, EaseUS, and Macrium should all have products that do the job.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Guys,

I just found this and would like some input before opening the

Toshiba 3TB's box:

Make SURE the 3TB is EMPTY as this will wipe ALL data on the drive

To make a fully accessible 3TB with 4k sector:


1. Boot to desktop.

2. Open "My Computer" in Windows Explorer.

3. Click on the EMPTY 3TB HDD.

4. If the factory made some partitions on it, delete them all.

5. Once it is just one disk, right-click it and click "Format"

6. Select "4096", "NTFS" and "Format".

7. Click OK. Since the 3TB is EMPTY, it should be real quick.

8. It's now ready to be partitioned to your liking up to 2.7 or so

TB's total and is set as MBR.

Big Al

That doesn't work. Those instructions were obviously untested.

First of all, when you plug in the HDD, turn it on, and go to disk management, it prompts you to "initialize" the disk. This is before you even format it. You have to choose GPT or MBR then.

Formatting with 4KB NTFS cluster sizes has NOTHING to do with the sector size used over the SATA interface.

 

[imagoon]

That and 4k clusters are the default NTFS cluster size which is what selecting "4096" is actually doing, IE setting it to default cluster size. Any reason it has to be MBR?

 

[Big_Al_C]

imagoon

My latest Ghost is v11.5.1.2269, which I found out from Symantec

has issues with GPT. I cannot find v11.5.1.2298 which WILL work.


When I load my "Make C" CD, it loads Ghost, makes an image of

my C Drive and stores it on my E Drive as "Newest.gho". It then

CRC checks (verifies) the image and then (if the image passes

inspection) shows a black screen with a blinking cursor.

At that screen, I remove my Bootable CD and reboot into Windows.


The image that Ghost makes can have ANY file deleted OR added

to the image using "Ghost Explorer" and will restore as if

it were never touched.


When I load my "Restore C" CD, it loads Ghost, goes to the

E Drive, finds "Newest.gho" and overwrites the C Partition.


If I want to clone a partition, I load my "Manual Ghost" CD,

it loads Ghost and I then select a partition on the "Source"

HDD and then find the proper sized empty partition on the

"Destination" HDD and tell Ghost to have at it.

I can't see doing my weekly updating without Ghost!

 

[brocks]

I have a Seagate 3TB drive, and I used DiscWizard to make it look like two physical drives, 2.2TB and 760GB. It worked fine with my old PC with a conventional BIOS, including booting Windows 7-64 from the first partition of the 2.2 TB portion. Both parts of it could hold four primary partitions, and they worked with TrueCrypt, too. No problems at all.

I recently got a new PC with UEFI, and I'm now booting from a different drive with GPT in Win 8.1 Pro 64. Since then, I've stopped seeing the 760GB part on occasion. Scared me to death, because I had a lot of important data on there, but I reinstalled DiscWizard and rebooted, and it showed up again. But it disappeared again a couple more times, so I've stopped using it on the new PC, because I'm afraid that one of these times, it won't come back.

 

[Big_Al_C]

Well, I HATE to admit defeat, but since I CANNOT find the

Ghost v11.5.1.2298 from GSS 2.5.1 that DOES see GPT HDD's,

I've concluded that my only recourse is to relegate my 3TB to

GPT and to BACKUP status to my 2TB Toshiba and dusted-off 1TB

Hitachi MBR HDD's that I'll be using as my main drives.


After numerous E-Mails to a bunch of Cloning Software companies,

I've settled on MiniTool Partition Wizard v8.1.1 from

http://www.partitionwizard.com (To top it off, it's FREE!!!)

to pre-partition my 3TBer and to do the "Copy partitions from

my 1 and 2TB MBR's to partitions on my 3TB GPT" and use my

Ghost v11.5.1.2269's Make and Restore Bootable CD's to do my

MBR C and D Drive imaging chores.