1 Topic by CurtTimmerman

  • CurtTimmerman
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Topic: partition size limit (2TB)

I purchased a 12 TB USB drive to use as for backup. It is set up as the boot drive on a Raspberry 4. The Raspberry configuration app would only allocate 2TB to the root partition. I tried to allocate the remaining 8.91TB to a partition (ext4) but received this error:

partition length of 19142803456 sectors exceeds the msdos-partition-table-imposed maximum of 4294967295

Is there any way to get around this limitation?

BTW - Great application!

Thanks,
Curt

2 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: partition size limit (2TB)

What type of partition table is on the device?

You can check in GParted by selecting the drive and selecting View -> Device Information.

An msdos partition table is limited to 2 TB.

If the drive has an msdos partition table then you will need to consider reformatting the drive with a GPT (GUID Partition Table) to be able to access more than 2 TB.  Remember to back up all your important information first!

3 Reply by CurtTimmerman

  • CurtTimmerman
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Re: partition size limit (2TB)

Can the partition table be converted to GPT without reformatting the drive?

4 Reply by gedakc

  • gedakc
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Re: partition size limit (2TB)

Perhaps technically it can be done, but that is not a feature of GParted.