Hey guys,
I have done some googling but i haven’t found the exact answer I’m looking for.
So before I begin, I should let you know that I'm running Debian Squeeze with the 2.6.32-5 kernel. From what I have read this kernel should fully support drives larger than the 2.2TB barrier.
I have purchased a couple 3TB HDD's and have been having some problems mounting them.
I was planning on using the first as an internal drive in a caddy, keeping it as NTFS as I’m intending this to backup media from a windows PC so if needed I could connect it direct to the windows PC to recover data. The second HDD I also wanted as NTFS but as an external drive, so i can swap it between my Debian PC and my windows PC.
I can see the drives in fdisk but when trying to mount the drive as NTFS i get an error that the file system is incorrect.
I then tried to re-setup the partition using gparted but that errored, I then moved to parted which worked, I re-format it as ext4 and it mounted fine. But this isn’t really what i want...
Does anyone know how to resolve the issue of mounting NTFS drives on Debian squeeze that are over the 2.2TB Barrier, is this a kernel issue? Any ideas would be appreciated!
I also use Debian Squeeze with the GNOME desktop. Occasionally I have the need to mount an external NTFS drive which is about 2TB in size. All I have to do is connect the USB cable and the drive is automagically mounted. I didn't need to do any fiddling of any configuration files.
Is ntfs-3g installed and are you connecting the drive with a USB cable? My NTFS drive can be connected with an ethernet cable but I have problems with this. I think need to install another package.
I can mount any drive 2TB and below (ntfs or ext3,4) with no issues. I believe the problem has somthing to do with the 2.2TB size barrier (2^32*512=2,199,023,255,552, or 2.2TB).
This barrier should be fixed (or increased) with the latest kernels\OS
I just find it interesting that im only having the issue with NTFS drives above 2TB and not EXT, even though i did have some troubles formatting the drive to ext4 but im guessing thats related to the limitations of the applications i used and nothing else.
2.2 TB is a MBR limit. You should use GPT instead. Also note that fdisk does not support GPT.
Have you tried creating a NTFS partition using gparted or parted?
Is there a command that will format a NTFS drive this size?
It seems the kernel may have to be tuned on your system to support GPT under Linux, which you then use parted, not fdisk to create a partition table,
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tip
Then you can use mkfs.* to format your partition, or mkfs.ntfs to create a NTFS volume.
Thanks sm and everyone else
I'm just re creating the drive now, after rebooting the USB drive seemed to mount fine so i just created the gpt partition and im formatting the internal drive now as NTFS *fingers crossed*
Edit: it mounted fine! Thanks guys
Hey guys, i just went to add another 3TB drive into my machine and had the same issue again.
@assembling You were spot on abut formatting the drive as gtp, Thanks.
Windows automatically formats it as HPFS/NTFS and Linux obviously doesn’t like this. The weird thing is i could mount it as the HPFS/NTFS through USB just not through my sata controller.
This is the disk formatted as HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/sde: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x33c5b108 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sde1 1 45601 366282000 7 HPFS/NTFS Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
And here you can see its mounted, but it's mounted through USB
/dev/sde1 2.8T 1.3T 1.6T 45% /media/3TB-2
But when trying to mount the disk as HPFS/NTFS through my sata controller i get the error below.
root /home/chris # mount -t ntfs /dev/sde1 /home/chris/Media/3TB-2 NTFS signature is missing. Failed to mount '/dev/sde1': Invalid argument The device '/dev/sde1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS. Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?
I guess my question now would be, why would the format make any difference when its on USB compared to SATA
Below is my other 3TB disk mounted on my sata controller but as GPT formatted as NTFS
Disk /dev/sdd: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000 Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdd1 1 267350 2147483647+ ee GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary
And you can see the disk is mounted here from (On my SATA controller)
/dev/sdd1 2.8T 1.6T 1.3T 56% /home/chris/Media/3TB-1
So, now my next task is to backup all the data on the HPFS/NTFS drive and format it as GTP.. How annoying lol
If anyone has an explanation for the above (works as USB but not SATA) i would love to hear why this is happening.
If anyone has an explanation for the above (works as USB but not SATA) i would love to hear why this is happening.
It could be that the USB controller uses some hacks for compatibility, though it's difficult to know for sure. This document has some more information (see number 10). What brand is your external drive case?
Thanks!
That sounds like the cause! Its a seagate housing. I checked all my local computer shops and It was a lot cheaper to buy an external segate drive and remove the disk from the housing then what it was to buy the drive by itself (By up to $100 cheaper per drive). I know that doesn’t make sense, im trying to work it out my self lol
I never would have thought that they seagate done something to the USB controller in the external housing to trick your computer in to thinking the drive is partitioned in the correct format.
Do you think this is going to be a problem when i re attach the drive to my windows PC? Maybe i will buy a different housing..