1 Topic by Andrepartthree

  • Andrepartthree
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Topic: stupid newbie question what is "re-partition it for windows uws" :)

Hi guys brand new to the forums and first thing I want to say is thank you kindly to the developers for making this software available to us in the first place  smile

I basically have a surveillance drive that was being used as an external drive for my digital video recording device (record TV shows) - not proprietary "Directv property" by any means I purchased it on my own and hooked it up to the DVR  smile  (seagate skyhawk 4 TB hard drive).  I've stopped using Directv and plan on using the hard drive for data storage ( I understand that using it to run Windows off of is a bad idea , just plan on using it as a secondary hard drive for files I don't really modify or change.. videos, music, ebooks that sort of thing)

The helpful folks at tom's hardware pointed me in your guys direction and said to use your software smile .. thanks for the tutorials it looks pretty straightforward..there's only one thing confusing me and it's probably the dumbest question in the world tongue

At tom's hardware they said I should "  delete the partition(s) on the drive, re-partition it for windows uws, and format it to NTFS " ... everything makes sense to me except the "repartition it to windows uws", tried a search of the gparted documentation and google search to try to figure it out myself with no luck sad ... is " uws " an option I should select, maybe under the "partition" command when running the Gparted program?  Or is it enough to just delete the existing partition on the 4 TB hard drive, reformat it to NTFS and just call it a day? 

The hard drive will be used in a Windows 8 operating system.

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and replies !  smile

2 Reply by class413

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Re: stupid newbie question what is "re-partition it for windows uws" :)

Not stupid at all. It seems to be something specific.
I never encountered "uws" in the past. I guess it is "Universal Windows Service", an open-source project under Sourceforge (BSD licence). According to the Sourceforge page:

What does UWS do?
It continuously checks for different start events and run configured executables if one is reached.
It watches configured executables and provide reactions due to different application states.
A user script which will be cyclically executed provides more flexibility.

I read the installation and use info. I found nothing concerning any special filesystem format related to "uws". It is a service that you have to install in the operating system and configure it using its special configuration tools. Obviously, this service will call the executables needed to take pictures (or other info) from your surveillance system and store them on disk.

I understand that the disk partitioning and file system has to be compatible with your operating system (ms windows). To be able to access the entire disk capacity you have to use GPT (GUID partition table) instead of the legacy msdos type partition table that can't access more than 2TiB of disk space. You have to create a partition formatted as NTFS.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by Andrepartthree

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Re: stupid newbie question what is "re-partition it for windows uws" :)

Thank you so much for  the quick reply smile .. if you don't mind me imposing a bit further on  your kindness smile ... the  "you have to use GPT (GUID partition table) instead of the legacy msdos type partition table that can't access more than 2TiB of disk space" part - formatting in NTFS would do that automatically? Or that's some sort of option I should select when  using Gparted?  Again thanks so much for taking the time to answer me smile

4 Reply by class413

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Re: stupid newbie question what is "re-partition it for windows uws" :)

This isn't implied with NTFS. NTFS is the filesystem within a partition (NTFS and the various flavors of FAT are the filesystems natively recognised and handled by ms windows). It can be else with other partitions in the same hard drive.
The legacy MBR partition table (or msdos type) supports up to 2 TiB of disk space.

To make things simpler you can try to leave the partition table unchanged. I guess that it will support the full drive's capacity, as you have already used it in the past. For this, you can just delete the existing partitions with GParted, make a new partition and format it as NTFS.
GParted can show you the type of the existing partition table.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

5 Reply by Andrepartthree

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Re: stupid newbie question what is "re-partition it for windows uws" :)

class413 wrote:

This isn't implied with NTFS. NTFS is the filesystem within a partition (NTFS and the various flavors of FAT are the filesystems natively recognised and handled by ms windows). It can be else with other partitions in the same hard drive.
The legacy MBR partition table (or msdos type) supports up to 2 TiB of disk space.

To make things simpler you can try to leave the partition table unchanged. I guess that it will support the full drive's capacity, as you have already used it in the past. For this, you can just delete the existing partitions with GParted, make a new partition and format it as NTFS.
GParted can show you the type of the existing partition table.


Again thank you so much !  smile   I really appreciate it smile ... will try to update a week from now (sometimes threads like this show up in google searches even if one is not part of gparted forum so might help some online searcher  in the future who had a similar question to see the final results smile  )

6 Reply by Andrepartthree

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Re: stupid newbie question what is "re-partition it for windows uws" :)

Well so far so good, I admit I've been using the hard drive all of one day so far but after using gparted as per the kind advice above, hard drive is up and running smile ...

Windows (8.1) of course decided to screw me over for a while and got the old " ethernet 3 doesn't have a valid ip configuration " and " an error occurred while renewing internet interface 3 :  unable to contact your dhcp server request has timed out " error messages that occur when your PC decides to stop connecting to the internet for some reason known only to itself , ran the usual troubleshooting steps (ipconfig release, ipconfig renew, restart PC) with no luck - then the PC suddenly caught itself and I could connect to the internet again... Windows is a temperamental beast and I'm sure this won't necessarily happen to someone else just because it happened to me (not sure if it had to do with me foolishly not uninstalling my sata DVD reader/writer - had to disconnect it since this was hard drive number six I'm adding to my PC).

I've put a reminder into Microsoft Outlook to come back and update this thread a year from now to let people know if things are still going smoothly (mainly in case this helps someone else even outside of the forum - threads like these pop up in google searches even if one is not part of the forum community so could help someone out there on the 'net ).. thanks again everyone  smile  ..