Solve : A noobie question about partitions?

1.	Solve : A noobie question about partitions?
Answer» I just purchased a 5TB Western Digital HD. As I was on the INITIAL Windows setup screen where it asks you where you would like to install the OS there were 2 seperate partitions just over 2TB each. Why did the manufacturers do that? And is there any way to combine them into one partition without reformatting? One of the things steering me away from WD HDD's recently...i despise manuf. takin liberties with hardware i'm buying. I'd visit the site and see why for that model #...if unacceptable then return it for a Seagate.I disagree. There is good reason to limit a PARTURITION to about 2 TB. Quote FF FF FF FFh = 4294967295d. This maximum partition size is not in bytes, it is in number of sectors. Since currently sectors are limited to 512 bytes, the maximum size ends up being 2 TB. 4,294,967,295 sectors * 512 bytes/sectors = 2,199,023,255,040 bytes or 2TB.Feb 18, 2010 Older versions of NTFS put a limit on partition size. Your citation is 6 years old.Traditional MBR partition tables are limited to 2tb per partition. In order to fully utilise the capacity in a single partition the drive needs to be formatted with a GPT partition table. I imagine they format it as MBR from the factory so that it works for people trying to use it in old machines or running old software that doesn't recognise GPT partition tables. You can definitely sort the drive to allow a single partition that spans the entire drive but yes, you do need to reformat it. That said, I've always just formatted new hard drives before use as a matter of course. It shouldn't be that much of an issue to format it although you MAY need to use a third PARTY live CD such as the GParted live CD.As far as I'm aware,New Internal HDDs come unpartitioned, regardless of manufacturer or size. Was this a refurbished unit, or perhaps an external Drive? 2TB is the maximum partition size when using an MBR Partition table. Having volumes larger than 2TB requires the use of the Guid Partition Table (GPT), which includes a number of caveats particularly with regard to OS support. Quote from: BC_Programmer on March 23, 2016, 08:00:44 PM As far as I'm aware,New Internal HDDs come unpartitioned, regardless of manufacturer or size. Was this a refurbished unit, or perhaps an external Drive? 2TB is the maximum partition size when using an MBR Partition table. Having volumes larger than 2TB requires the use of the Guid Partition Table (GPT), which includes a number of caveats particularly with regard to OS support. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236971

Answer»

I just purchased a 5TB Western Digital HD. As I was on the INITIAL Windows setup screen where it asks you where you would like to install the OS there were 2 seperate partitions just over 2TB each. Why did the manufacturers do that? And is there any way to combine them into one partition without reformatting? One of the things steering me away from WD HDD's recently...i despise manuf. takin liberties with hardware i'm buying.

I'd visit the site and see why for that model #...if unacceptable then return it for a Seagate.I disagree.
There is good reason to limit a PARTURITION to about 2 TB.
Quote

FF FF FF FFh = 4294967295d.
This maximum partition size is not in bytes, it is in number of sectors. Since currently sectors are limited to 512 bytes, the maximum size ends up being 2 TB. 4,294,967,295 sectors * 512 bytes/sectors = 2,199,023,255,040 bytes or 2TB.Feb 18, 2010

Older versions of NTFS put a limit on partition size.

Your citation is 6 years old.Traditional MBR partition tables are limited to 2tb per partition. In order to fully utilise the capacity in a single partition the drive needs to be formatted with a GPT partition table. I imagine they format it as MBR from the factory so that it works for people trying to use it in old machines or running old software that doesn't recognise GPT partition tables.

You can definitely sort the drive to allow a single partition that spans the entire drive but yes, you do need to reformat it. That said, I've always just formatted new hard drives before use as a matter of course. It shouldn't be that much of an issue to format it although you MAY need to use a third PARTY live CD such as the GParted live CD.As far as I'm aware,New Internal HDDs come unpartitioned, regardless of manufacturer or size. Was this a refurbished unit, or perhaps an external Drive?

2TB is the maximum partition size when using an MBR Partition table. Having volumes larger than 2TB requires the use of the Guid Partition Table (GPT), which includes a number of caveats particularly with regard to OS support. Quote from: BC_Programmer on March 23, 2016, 08:00:44 PM

As far as I'm aware,New Internal HDDs come unpartitioned, regardless of manufacturer or size. Was this a refurbished unit, or perhaps an external Drive?

2TB is the maximum partition size when using an MBR Partition table. Having volumes larger than 2TB requires the use of the Guid Partition Table (GPT), which includes a number of caveats particularly with regard to OS support.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236971

Solve : A noobie question about partitions?

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