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MBR limit of 2TB usable space. But why I can see more than 2TB in my external 3TB MBR disk ?

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  • MBR limit of 2TB usable space. But why I can see more than 2TB in my external 3TB MBR disk ?

    My OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 SP1 (MBR disk)

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    Thanks in advance

  • #2
    Re: MBR limit of 2TB usable space. But why I can see more than 2TB in my external 3TB MBR disk ?

    Check out Everything You Need to Know About 3TB Hard Drives | PCWorld from July 2011 where they say:

    You can use the full capacity of a 3TB drive via USB--with a drive enclosure that supports it.
    The SATA-to-USB bridge chip inside the enclosure takes care of any addressing issues.
    Q9650 @ 4.10GHz [9x456MHz]
    P35-DS4 [rev: 2.0] ~ Bios: F14
    4x2GB OCZ Reaper PC2-8500 1094MHz @5-5-5-15
    MSI N460GTX Hawk Talon Attack (1GB) video card <---- SLI ---->
    Seasonic SS-660XP2 80 Plus Platinum psu (660w)
    WD Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB (data)
    Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD (boot)
    SLI @ 16/4 works when running HyperSLI
    Cooler Master 120XL Seidon push/pull AIO cpu water cooling
    Cooler Master HAF XB computer case (RC-902XB-KKN1)
    Asus VH242H 24" monitor [1920x1080]
    MSI N460GTX Hawk (1GB) video card
    Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speakers
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    HT|Omega Claro plus+ sound card
    CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD UPS
    E6300 (R0) @ 3.504GHz [8x438MHz] ~~ P35-DS3L [rev: 1.0] ~ Bios: F9 ~~ 4x2GB Kingston HyperX T1 PC2-8500, 876MHz @4-4-4-10
    Seasonic X650 80+ gold psu (650w) ~~ Xigmatek Balder HDT 1283 cpu cooler ~~ Cooler Master CM 690 case (RC-690-KKN1-GP)
    Samsung 830 128GB SSD MZ-7PC128B/WW (boot) ~~ WD Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB (data) ~~ ZM-MFC2 fan controller
    HT|Omega Striker 7.1 sound card ~~ Asus VH242H monitor [1920x1080] ~~ Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speakers
    win7 x64 sp1 Home Premium ~~ CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD U.P.S
    .

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    • #3
      Re: MBR limit of 2TB usable space. But why I can see more than 2TB in my external 3TB MBR disk ?

      I think you are using a 4kn drive, which has 4k sectors instead of 512b, which allows 16 TB instead of 2 TB.
      The 2 TB is only for 2^32 sectors which, when using 512Bit sectors.

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      • #4
        Re: MBR limit of 2TB usable space. But why I can see more than 2TB in my external 3TB MBR disk ?

        New boards with EFI/UEFI bios support it.

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        • #5
          Re: MBR limit of 2TB usable space. But why I can see more than 2TB in my external 3TB MBR disk ?

          There is a small problem with this translation.. If the bridge gets damaged like the plug coming off, you can not take the drive and attach it to the computer SATA ports and do anything with it. There are externals which do not do address translations which will work as is as both an external and an internal doe data recovery etc.... Before seagate used to use ontrack and so did WDC.. but both have now implemented this in firmware making data recovery much harder.. Ofcourse there is also another trick here using 4K sectors called advanced sectors.. It increases the 2TB limit to 16TB limit for MBR.. But the drives use 4096 byte sectors instead of 512 byte sectors.. For a while this was the next big thing but it died off suddenly and Microsoft did make changes so windows mostly worked with such drives but I think win7 backup had problems.

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