3tb HDD MBR rather than GPT

Gedalia_w

Gedalia_w

Gedalia_w

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I just bought a new 3tb hdd to be used in an external caddy and I am able to access all 3tb (or rather 2.7tb) over USB by converting it to GPT (although not through my ESATA port).

The problem is that the primary purpose of this external drive is to be plugged into the USB port of a non-network TV to play the media content I'm going to be transferring on to it, but the TV can't read the GPT formatted drive. I can't just stream the content to the TV as it doesn't have network capabilities, but reads pretty much all media formats directly off a USB hard drive.

My question, which I have not been able to find a suitable answer from googling, is whether there is a way to create two partitions using MBR format to utilise the full space on the drive and allow my TV to read the contents.

If I convert the drive to MBR using windows 7 Disk Management, it automatically locks out the final 700gb and won't allow me to create a second partition on the drive.

All I've been able to find in my searches are people either simply saying "just create two partitions", which clearly doesn't work in Disk Management, or some vague answers about somehow fooling windows into thinking that the last 700gb is actually a separate MBR drive.

Anyone have any ideas?

Should I just give up and use GPT and lose the brilliant plug and play functionality with my TV, or just send the drive back and get a 2tb one?
 
Last edited:
Gedalia_w said:
My question, which I have not been able to find a suitable answer from googling, is whether there is a way to create two partitions using MBR format to utilise the full space on the drive and allow my TV to read the contents.
Click to expand...
The simple answer is no. An MBR partition table simply runs out of address space at 2.2Tb and since you can only have one partition table per physical volume then you're stuck with a 2.2Tb limit.

There are software workarounds (normally for using big disks on XP) but they won't work with a TV.
 
Thanks for the quick response guys. So the answer is basically no.

I didn't realise prior to purchase that this would be an issue, but lesson learned.

I think I'll keep the HDD, as it's WD Red for general backup, and get a cheap 2tb external drive just to get stuff on the TV and to act as further backup of my media.
 
Just out of a little thing, If you had a 4k sector disk that was NATIVE 4k windows will let you create MBR partitions upto 16TB.... you can find external HDDs that fake the sector size to allow disks to be create 4Tb MBR partitions (for XP)

Stelly
 
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