O.T. MBR Partition 2TB

Windows 10 Pro, 10.0.19041.450, 2004. So I am a little concerned about one
of my portable hard drives I use for backing up. It is making a little soft
clicking sound every once an a while. It is a Seagate backup plus 4 TB and
I know it is old. I actually rotate my backups through 3 usb drives and for
now 4. The new portable is a 5 TB Costco Seagate and I wanted MBR but I
could not make 1 of the partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT.
The interesting thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32
TB, NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would allow
this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have been through
clean installs such as 2004. How could this be possible and can it be done?

Bill

Bill Bradshaw wrote:

I wanted MBR but I
could not make 1 of the partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT.
The interesting thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32
TB, NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would allow
this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have been through
clean installs such as 2004. How could this be possible and can it be done?

AFAIK for a partition larger that 2TB, you need GPT instead of MBR, and
it you wanted it to be bootable (you probably don't) the PC has to have
UEFI instead of BIOS.

I don't know what trickery the Seagate driver might use, but for
portability you're probably better off without it ...

In article , says...

Windows 10 Pro, 10.0.19041.450, 2004. So I am a little concerned about one
of my portable hard drives I use for backing up. It is making a little soft
clicking sound every once an a while. It is a Seagate backup plus 4 TB and
I know it is old. I actually rotate my backups through 3 usb drives and for
now 4. The new portable is a 5 TB Costco Seagate and I wanted MBR but I
could not make 1 of the partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT.
The interesting thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32
TB, NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would allow
this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have been through
clean installs such as 2004. How could this be possible and can it be done?

Bill

It's not a driver within Windows. These drives use on-the-fly conversion from
the standard 512 byte sector size to 4096 - solely to make these large drives
compatible with XP! The downside is that if the electronics fails, and you
'harvest' the SATA disk, you can't read it. The trick is to use a working USB
adapter of the same type, to to use the excellent Testdisk, and configure
Testdisk to treat the sector size as 4096, at which point TD can read it and
copy off files and folder hierarchies effortlessly. (To learn to write this
60-second summary cost me many, many hours...)

--

Phil, London

On 01/09/2020 18.47, Andy Burns wrote:
Bill Bradshaw wrote:
....

AFAIK for a partition larger that 2TB, you need GPT instead of MBR, and
it you wanted it to be bootable (you probably don't) the PC has to have
UEFI instead of BIOS.

Linux can boot fine with GPT and traditional BIOS. I have not tried with
Windows, but it can be done if Microsoft wants to.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

Bill Bradshaw wrote:
Windows 10 Pro, 10.0.19041.450, 2004. So I am a little concerned about one
of my portable hard drives I use for backing up. It is making a little soft
clicking sound every once an a while. It is a Seagate backup plus 4 TB and
I know it is old. I actually rotate my backups through 3 usb drives and for
now 4. The new portable is a 5 TB Costco Seagate and I wanted MBR but I
could not make 1 of the partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT.
The interesting thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32
TB, NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would allow
this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have been through
clean installs such as 2004. How could this be possible and can it be done?

Bill



This isn't the only utility, but you might try looking
for an anomaly here. The WinXP version of fsutil does not
list "Bytes Per Physical Sector", the Windows 10 one does.

C:\fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo h:

NTFS Volume Serial Number : (8 bytes hex, from MBR)
NTFS Version : 3.1
LFS Version : 2.0
Number Sectors : 0x0000000007f047ff
Total Clusters : 0x0000000000fe08ff
Free Clusters : 0x0000000000ab0461
Total Reserved : 0x0000000000000d89
Bytes Per Sector : 512 === \___ This is a 512n drive
Bytes Per Physical Sector : 512 === /
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Mft Valid Data Length : 0x000000000e840000
Mft Start Lcn : 0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x0000000000000002
Mft Zone Start : 0x00000000002c2fa0
Mft Zone End : 0x00000000002c2fc0
Max Device Trim Extent Count : 0
Max Device Trim Byte Count : 0x0
Max Volume Trim Extent Count : 62
Max Volume Trim Byte Count : 0x40000000
Resource Manager Identifier : (a GUID)

virtual physical
------------ ------------
512n 512 external, 512 internal (legacy from long ago)
512e 512 external, 4096 internal (most modern drives use 4K internal)
(all current OSes support 512 external)
4096n 4096 external, 4096 internal (Windows 10 supports 4096 external, but not
on the initial 10240 release, it came later)

At least one RAID controller card (Areca) "lied" about the sector
size so that it could support 16TB RAID volumes (non-GPT) on an OS that
only understood 2TB devices. This trick has been around the block,
but you'd have to look up the details about how the subsystem
gets away with it.

*******

Acronis Capacity Manager creates multiple 2TB "fake" disk drives,
to make all the space accessible on Windows XP. It does not
rely on any sector-size tricks. It's also a nuisance to work with
(hand-crafted loopback mounts in Linux...).

Paul

In article ,
says...

In article , says...

Windows 10 Pro, 10.0.19041.450, 2004. So I am a little concerned about one
of my portable hard drives I use for backing up. It is making a little soft
clicking sound every once an a while. It is a Seagate backup plus 4 TB and
I know it is old. I actually rotate my backups through 3 usb drives and for
now 4. The new portable is a 5 TB Costco Seagate and I wanted MBR but I
could not make 1 of the partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT.
The interesting thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32
TB, NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would allow
this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have been through
clean installs such as 2004. How could this be possible and can it be done?

Bill

It's not a driver within Windows. These drives use on-the-fly conversion from
the standard 512 byte sector size to 4096 - solely to make these large drives
compatible with XP! The downside is that if the electronics fails, and you
'harvest' the SATA disk, you can't read it. The trick is to use a working USB
adapter of the same type, to to use the excellent Testdisk, and configure
Testdisk to treat the sector size as 4096, at which point TD can read it and
copy off files and folder hierarchies effortlessly. (To learn to write this
60-second summary cost me many, many hours...)

Spotted a typo that might be misleading. Correction:

"The trick is to use a working USB
adapter of the same type, *OR* to use the excellent Testdisk, ..."

--

Phil, London

In article , says...

Windows 10 Pro, 10.0.19041.450, 2004. So I am a little concerned about one
of my portable hard drives I use for backing up. It is making a little soft
clicking sound every once an a while. It is a Seagate backup plus 4 TB and
I know it is old. I actually rotate my backups through 3 usb drives and for
now 4. The new portable is a 5 TB Costco Seagate and I wanted MBR but I
could not make 1 of the partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT.
The interesting thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32
TB, NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would allow
this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have been through
clean installs such as 2004. How could this be possible and can it be done?

Bill

Worth adding that drives connected via USB.3 make their SMART data available to
a suitable utility which can save a lot of grief by giving early notice of disk
deterioration. I prefer HD Sentinel (paid, but worth it). Acronis Drive
Monitor is free but dating rapidly. HDTune and DiskCheckup are both free for
home use, and give basic SMART interpretation.

--

Phil, London

On 02/09/2020 12.00, Philip Herlihy wrote:


Worth adding that drives connected via USB.3 make their SMART data available to
a suitable utility which can save a lot of grief by giving early notice of disk
deterioration. I prefer HD Sentinel (paid, but worth it). Acronis Drive
Monitor is free but dating rapidly. HDTune and DiskCheckup are both free for
home use, and give basic SMART interpretation.

I have not tried on Windows, but there is smartctl. Free and complete.
Should work on USB 2, too.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

Paul wrote:
Bill Bradshaw wrote:
Windows 10 Pro, 10.0.19041.450, 2004. So I am a little concerned
about one of my portable hard drives I use for backing up. It is
making a little soft clicking sound every once an a while. It is a
Seagate backup plus 4 TB and I know it is old. I actually rotate my
backups through 3 usb drives and for now 4. The new portable is a 5
TB Costco Seagate and I wanted MBR but I could not make 1 of the
partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT. The interesting
thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32 TB,
NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would
allow this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have
been through clean installs such as 2004. How could this be
possible and can it be done? Bill



This isn't the only utility, but you might try looking
for an anomaly here. The WinXP version of fsutil does not
list "Bytes Per Physical Sector", the Windows 10 one does.

C:\fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo h:

NTFS Volume Serial Number : (8 bytes hex, from MBR)
NTFS Version : 3.1
LFS Version : 2.0
Number Sectors : 0x0000000007f047ff
Total Clusters : 0x0000000000fe08ff
Free Clusters : 0x0000000000ab0461
Total Reserved : 0x0000000000000d89
Bytes Per Sector : 512 === \___ This
is a 512n drive Bytes Per Physical Sector : 512 ===
/ Bytes Per Cluster : 4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Mft Valid Data Length : 0x000000000e840000
Mft Start Lcn : 0x00000000000c0000
Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x0000000000000002
Mft Zone Start : 0x00000000002c2fa0
Mft Zone End : 0x00000000002c2fc0
Max Device Trim Extent Count : 0
Max Device Trim Byte Count : 0x0
Max Volume Trim Extent Count : 62
Max Volume Trim Byte Count : 0x40000000
Resource Manager Identifier : (a GUID)

virtual physical
------------ ------------
512n 512 external, 512 internal (legacy from long ago)
512e 512 external, 4096 internal (most modern drives use 4K
internal) (all current
OSes support 512 external) 4096n 4096 external, 4096 internal
(Windows 10 supports 4096
external, but not on the initial 10240 release, it came later)
At least one RAID controller card (Areca) "lied" about the sector
size so that it could support 16TB RAID volumes (non-GPT) on an OS
that only understood 2TB devices. This trick has been around the block,
but you'd have to look up the details about how the subsystem
gets away with it.

*******

Acronis Capacity Manager creates multiple 2TB "fake" disk drives,
to make all the space accessible on Windows XP. It does not
rely on any sector-size tricks. It's also a nuisance to work with
(hand-crafted loopback mounts in Linux...).

Paul

When I purchased the Seagate backup plus I would have been running WinXP
Pro. So the utility changed the sector size.

C:\Windows\system32fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo g:
NTFS Volume Serial Number : 0x8dda9126604bdabb
NTFS Version : 3.1
LFS Version : 1.1
Total Sectors : 628,045,046 ( 2.3 TB)
Total Clusters : 628,045,046 ( 2.3 TB)
Free Clusters : 41,769,341 (159.3 GB)
Total Reserved Clusters : 152,300 (594.9 MB)
Reserved For Storage Reserve : 0 ( 0.0 KB)
Bytes Per Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096
Bytes Per Cluster : 4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 4096
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 1
Mft Valid Data Length : 2.64 GB
Mft Start Lcn : 0x0000000024381c60
Mft2 Start Lcn : 0x00000000002a812f
Mft Zone Start : 0x00000000066b27a0
Mft Zone End : 0x00000000066bace0
MFT Zone Size : 133.25 MB
Max Device Trim Extent Count : 0
Max Device Trim Byte Count : 0
Max Volume Trim Extent Count : 62
Max Volume Trim Byte Count : 0x40000000
Resource Manager Identifier : ABBA6891-BAA1-11E6-A1C4-002269E20D8E

This is an older computer so it uses BIOS and not UEFI. I will have to
check Seagate today to see if there is still something that would change the
sector size.

Bill

In article , says...

Paul wrote:
Bill Bradshaw wrote:
Windows 10 Pro, 10.0.19041.450, 2004. So I am a little concerned
about one of my portable hard drives I use for backing up. It is
making a little soft clicking sound every once an a while. It is a
Seagate backup plus 4 TB and I know it is old. I actually rotate my
backups through 3 usb drives and for now 4. The new portable is a 5
TB Costco Seagate and I wanted MBR but I could not make 1 of the
partitions greater than 2 TB so for now it is GPT. The interesting
thing is the backup plus is MBR and has a partition of 2.32 TB,
NTFS, 4096 Clusters. I do know Seagate had a driver that would
allow this on MBR but the driver should be long gone because I have
been through clean installs such as 2004. How could this be
possible and can it be done? Bill





This is an older computer so it uses BIOS and not UEFI. I will have to
check Seagate today to see if there is still something that would change the
sector size.

Bill

As I understand it, the conversion is hard-wired into the USB circuitry in
these drives.

--

Phil, London