8TB 2.5 HDD query

1st Official Post

    Hi All,

    I'm looking to buy an 8TB 2.5 HDD for my media player which has LibreElec installed on. I currently have a 2TB drive which has all my media on it and I'm pretty much out of space on. What I would like to know is if I buy an 8TB Drive and create a EXT4 partition, can I have 1 partition with the whole 8TB (not that i'll get the full 8TB).

    I know EXT4 will support it but I've not created a Partition bigger than 2TB before using EXT4. I assuming I can use gparted to create the partition and I know it will probably need to be UEFI however this drive is just for storage and not a boot partition.

    I have a 30GB msata installed on my motherboard which is the boot partition with LibreElec installed on.

    Can some clarify that I can do this before I go an blow £200+ on a bigger HDD

    Thanks in advance
    Greg

    • Official Post

    Bigger file sizes are not the problem. According to the EXT4 wiki page:

    Quote


    The ext4 filesystem can support volumes with sizes up to 1 exbibyte (EiB) and files with sizes up to 16 tebibytes (TiB).

    The bigger problem IMO could be the USB controller of your external harddisk enclosure. Full compatibility with Linux should be okay with a good brand disk enclosure, but... there is always that small chance.

    Quote from Klojum


    Bigger file sizes are not the problem. According to the EXT4 wiki page:

    The bigger problem IMO could be the USB controller of your external harddisk enclosure. Full compatibility with Linux should be okay with a good brand disk enclosure, but... there is always that small chance.

    Thanks for replying. The HDD is going to be internal. I'm running a Shuttle XH81V (specs on the link below)
    Shuttle United Kingdom - XH81V/XH81
    Just wanted to make sure the HDD will be alright before purchasing it.

    Hi All,

    Just to let you know I went ahead an purchased an 8TB. I used gparted live ISO on a usb stick to boot to the gparted software. Created the new GPT Primary partition and formatted the drive with EXT4. Labelled the partition and applied changes. Everything works as expected. Although I lost nearly 1TB once formatting as you lose a bit anyway.

    Just thought I'd update the post just in case someone else is thinking about doing this.

    • Official Post

    I can't believe you lost 1TB from an 8TB drive - something doesn't add up as it's just a data drive, so it should be close to 7.9!! TB as LE is on your msata

    Therefore the whole drive should be one partition as ext4.

    This results mostly from different unit prefixes of HDD manufacturers and operating systems.

    8TB = 8 * 10^12 B ~ 7.28 * 2^40 B = 7.28TiB