[SOLVED] Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit - possible to make multiple partitions that use entire 4tb drive?

[Asquirrel]

Hi folks. I have a 4tb drive I've been trying to partition into 2tb partitions with MBR in disk management . Is it possible to do this? I can't seem to find or understand the answers I'm finding online . Is the maximum size 2tb per physical drive (I lose the other 2 tb) if the partition table is MBR? Or is it 2tb logical size per drive, so I could have two 2tb partitions? Running windows 7 ultimate, 64 bit. Thank you very much for your help.

 

[Colif]

2.2tb is total drive space on 1 drive that MBR can access. You need GPT to access more than 2tb on that drive.

Over explanation of terms (See spoiler)

Spoiler

UEFI - Unified extensible Firmware Interface

If your PC is less than 11 years old, you have a UEFI bios now



In 2006 or so Intel decided the bios as it was at time was too limited and needed to be replaced so that it supported newer technologies as they were invented

By about 2009 a consortium of hardware makers had combined to create UEFI standard



Old bios were limited, they didn't know what a mouse was for, so everything was keyboard driven

they weren't expandable, everything had to fit in a small amount of memory

they only supported Master Boot Record (MBR) which can only have 4 partitions per drive (there are tricks to get around this) and max drive size is 2.2 tb



UEFI bios overcame all the limitations of legacy bios (as it came to be called)

it supports mouse, it has a GUI so it looks better than previous bios could

Its expandable, it can be added to to grow as new hardware is created.

UEFI supports MBR & GPT Drives


GPT = GUID Partition Table

GUID = Global Unique ID = Every GPT drive on earth has a unique ID

GPT drives can have a max of 255 partitions on them

Max size of a GPT drive/partition is 18.8 million TB

 

[Asquirrel]

Thank you for the layman's explanation Colif. That technical stuff (over explanation of terms) was way over my head. But I looked like a bat flying into a window. Looks like I'll have to format this GPT and use it as a data drive, and continue to use my old flaky 650gb drive.

 

[Colif]

at least the 64bit version has access to GPT, its the later versions of windows that have moved away from mbr, and I don't think you can install WIn 11 as anything other than GPT since it requires secure boot, and thats not a feature of mbr.

Win 10 preferred GPT but would let you install it as MBR. Not sure about 8 or 8.1 as I didn't use them

 

[Colif]

Thank you for the layman's explanation Colif. That technical stuff (over explanation of terms) was way over my head.

The only thing you need to learn from that is. the max size of a GPT drive is so big that you won't have that problem again, any time soon.
MBR - 2.2tb
GPT - 18.8 million tb