How do I reduce hard drive capacity

[VineDragon]

My friend is attempting to use his 8tb hard drive on a ps4, but the ps4 only supports 8tb and the drive is showing as 8.1tb
Is there any way to reduce the hard drive capacity through disk management or any special program on pc?

 

[mdd1963]

If connected to a Windows 10 PC, and opening Admin Tools/Computer Mngmt/Storage/Disk Mngmt, normally an existing partition may be shrunk (if no partitions exist yet, perhaps one a bit less than 8 TB can be created), but, I'm not sure if that will satisfy the PS4 or not...

Can't hurt to try...

 

[fzabkar]

You can use HDAT2 to create a HPA (Host Protected Area). In this way you can shrink the physical capacity to any size that you want.

https://www.hdat2.com/

 

[Math Geek]

when you plug the drive into the PS4 it formats it to its file system. at this time it knows how big it is physically. since any partition made in windows will be deleted as it formats the drive, something that simple won't work.

i don't know anything about what hdat2 does so can't comment there but it would have to change the firmware at minimum to tell the PS4 the drive is only so big and limit the PS4 to only using that amount of the drive. otherwise the PS4 will format the whole thing and know how big it is.

normally i'd ask "why a drive so big" but with the crazy sizes games are getting to plus DLC and so on, i can imagine 8 TB filling up way too fast.

 

[popatim]

Hdat2 can 'fool' the device into thinking a drive is not the size it is. We use it at work occasionally to make newer larger drives appear to be smaller to the host. Not all drives support the feature though.

 

[Math Geek]

interesting, i guess i've never had a reason to artificially shrink a hdd to look into how to do it.

learned something new today, i'll just tuck that info into my "might need later" file