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I am getting conflicting information about this ...
At one place I read
The MBR on the other hand supports partitioning hard-disks of space which is up to ONLY 2 Terabytes (TB). If you use a hard-drive greater than 2 TB in installation and partitioning, you can be successful BUT the space beyond 2 TB will be lost. For example, if you have 2.5 TB, the 0.5 TB will be lost.
However, it seems that the Partition size is limited by the 32-bit size of capacity field in the partition table. This is
(2^32)-1 x 512 byte = 2 TB.
But since the MBR has up to FOUR primary partitions and EACH one can be up tp 2TB, that should give a total of
4 x 2 TB = 8 TB
No ?
So a single hard-drive of say 7 TB can be fully used by an MBR partition scheme which means that the above quoted maximum for the Hard drive limit seems to be wrong.
But I see this 2 TB limit quoted a lot on the internet, but it would only be true if you allocated only one partition, but you have up to four.
Can someone explain this?
1The disclaimer is talking about a single partition. However, without knowing which OS we are talking about, the rest of your question cannot be answered. – Ramhound – 2019-01-11T15:19:08.157
OK, say we are using Windows10 – David Robert Bird – 2019-01-11T15:32:50.983
You will only be able to allocate a single 2 TB partition (slightly smaller due to base conversion), in addition to the require partitions that come before that single partition, if you are using Windows. Linux does not necessarily have the same limitation. However, using your example, that isn't possible with any OS. If you need support a drive that size switch to GPT. – Ramhound – 2019-01-11T15:43:23.117
Thanks, but can you explin why it is not possible? What is the limiting factor of only ONE 2 TB partition, when MBR allows 4 partitions and the limiting factor is the 32bits allocated to partition size... many thanks – David Robert Bird – 2019-01-11T16:10:21.937
1@David, in future Questions, it's helpful to name and link the sources you're quoting, rather than the vague "at one place" and "quoted a lot on the Internet". You can also quote the authorities directly. When you found multiple competing authorities, you asked a question here (another authority). Research is just finding several authorities and deciding which is going to be the truth for your current needs. The Answer given below links to Wikipedia, which is a good place to start, but you can go deeper and find more credible sources. – Christopher Hostage – 2019-01-11T16:38:25.670