[joah_fr_Alberta]

Hi guys, 4tb external drive is formatted as a single NTFS partition and connected to a 4-usb powered hub. If I connect a 2tb external to the hub it is detected np. But it won't show the 4tb. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

[joah_fr_Alberta]

My guess is something to do with the partition table, mayb I have to reformat the drive and make them smaller? Anyone know?

[Bosse_B]

Well this may be a bit old, but it states a maximum volume size of 2TB if the sector/cluster size is 512 bytes. So to go higher one would need a sector/cluster bigger than that.
But normally the default on bigger drives is 4K and this gives 16 TB as the max volume size.
Since I assume the drive works fine in Windows, it should also be fine on the Pi if its ntfs driver supports this size.
You should (as always when asking) specify the operating system you are using on the Pi!

[joah_fr_Alberta]

Thanks for the reply, I believe I am running XBMC. Perhaps then I should be looking at the Pi's ntfs driver? I wonder if it might be the blue 3.0 connector on the external drive ...

[speedwell68]

XBMC is the program running on top of the OS. The OS will most likely be Openelec or Raspbmc.

[joah_fr_Alberta]

Ok thanks for your reply, I will look into this tomorrow.

Cheers,

[Bosse_B]

Thanks for the reply, I believe I am running XBMC. Perhaps then I should be looking at the Pi's ntfs driver? I wonder if it might be the blue 3.0 connector on the external drive ...

You are running XBMC (== the application) on top of an operating system (RaspBMC, OpenElec, RaspBian or something else).
I requested you to mention which operating system you use, not the application...

A driver is not a connector! A disk driver is a piece if software running in the operating system and enables the operating system to attach a connected disk to itself so it can be used by the person using the system for storing files.
If the ntfs disk driver is not installed in your operating system then it will not be able to read the disk.
If the disk driver is not the latest version then it will not be able to use the latest features (whatever these my be) possibly limiting your disk access.

Since you say you can use a 2TB disk drive but not a 4 TB one then there may be differences between the ntfs formatting of these drives that makes them sufficiently different for the Pi ntfs driver not being able to cope with the 4 TB drive. One example may be the sector or cluster size used on them.

You should use a disk utility on a PC to examine the two drives to see what is the difference.

Do you already have files on the drives?
If not then a reformat might solve the problem.

[dandnsmith]

It would probably be better to use a linux based OS to look at the makeup of that HDD, because of the limitations of the utility supplied with Windows. GParted can tell you rather more, including whether the HDD is organised for UEFI (I think this likely with >2TB HDD) instead of with the GPT partition table - not sure whether RaspBMC can cope with this

[joah_fr_Alberta]

Thanks for your help so far, here's the info I grabbed off the drive using a Windows utility.
Quad Tera (I


Volume letter:
(I
Volume label:
Quad Tera
Partition GUID:
2D4E337D-4CFC-4F70-893C-033F51EABDA3
Partition type:
EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 (Microsoft Basic Data Partition)
Type:
GPT Volume
File system:
NTFS
Root entries:
16
Sectors per boot:
8
Sectors per cluster:
8
Serial number:
5CA2-9A87-A29A-64F4
NTFS version:
3.01
Volume size:
3725.8 GB
Partition size:
3725.8 GB
Used space:
3248.8 GB
Free space:
477 GB
Hidden:
No


Quad Tera (I
Quad Tera (I
HDD number:
2
Linux partition number:
2

Volume label:
Quad Tera
Partition ID:

Serial number:
5CA2-9A87-A29A-64F4
Sectors per boot:
8
Sectors per cluster:
8



Sector No:
Cyl:
Hd:
Sec:
First physical sector:
264,192
16
113
34
Last physical sector:
7,814,035,455
486401
53
52

Hard disk geometry:

486401
255
63


Quad Tera (I
Quad Tera (I
File system:
NTFS
NTFS version:
3.01
Sector size:
512 Bytes
Sectors per cluster:
8

[joah_fr_Alberta]

So mayb accordingly there shouldn't be anything wrong ...

[joah_fr_Alberta]

SOLVED-- removed the usb network dongle and placed it into the usb hub making space for usb hd. Plugged in usb 3.0 hard drive cable directly into pi and voila.

Thanks for everyones help, now to more better problems :p