Please help me convert a NAS into a hdd
November 21, 2014 5:09 AM Subscribe
The 3TB ex-NAS has been mounted as a new drive., but I only see ~350GB of that drive in windows. How do I convert/allocate/merge/discover the rest and make myself a big fat new hdd?? I've got EaseUS Partition Manager to help.
While the Seagate 3TB drive doesn't show up in windows on my pc, I d/loaded easeUS Partition Master (free) that *did* show the missing drive space.
I have since wiped the data from the partition I haven't been able to access::-> here's a pic of the current partitions on easeUS. It's the blue lined partition named "*" that I want merged with G: drive.
And this image shows what the menu is for creating a partition of "*", but it would seem to still lose a lot of space from the original 3TB drive.
I guess my main questions here are:
~~is there a better way to merge the G: drive with the "*" partition? and how do I prevent the seeming loss of nearly 80GB of space after creating a partition with EaseUS Partition Manager?
and
~~if I do go ahead with the 'create partition' on the "*" partition, will it be simple to merge the newly created partition with G: to create one big single drive??
I'm only semi-tech savvy and will probably be in ignorant waters very quickly, so I'd appreciate the easiest/fastest method that will achieve the end I hope for, viz: a new usable drive of as close to 3TB as possible.
(The Seagate NAS was supported by Memeo backup software/firmware ---> avoid it like the plague; in 10 months, it never once fully backed up my system without requiring some intervention from me, and usually it needed MANY program and/or pc restarts and took half a day or more to complete a backup)
While the Seagate 3TB drive doesn't show up in windows on my pc, I d/loaded easeUS Partition Master (free) that *did* show the missing drive space.
I have since wiped the data from the partition I haven't been able to access::-> here's a pic of the current partitions on easeUS. It's the blue lined partition named "*" that I want merged with G: drive.
And this image shows what the menu is for creating a partition of "*", but it would seem to still lose a lot of space from the original 3TB drive.
I guess my main questions here are:
~~is there a better way to merge the G: drive with the "*" partition? and how do I prevent the seeming loss of nearly 80GB of space after creating a partition with EaseUS Partition Manager?
and
~~if I do go ahead with the 'create partition' on the "*" partition, will it be simple to merge the newly created partition with G: to create one big single drive??
I'm only semi-tech savvy and will probably be in ignorant waters very quickly, so I'd appreciate the easiest/fastest method that will achieve the end I hope for, viz: a new usable drive of as close to 3TB as possible.
(The Seagate NAS was supported by Memeo backup software/firmware ---> avoid it like the plague; in 10 months, it never once fully backed up my system without requiring some intervention from me, and usually it needed MANY program and/or pc restarts and took half a day or more to complete a backup)
what devnull said - the EaseUS software shouldn't be necessary, the MS built in disk manager ought to be sufficient for this case. you could also try:
computer management -> storage -> disk management:
- right-click G: and select "Extend Volume..."
(and, on a formatted 3TB drive, the "lost" 80GB very likely isn't actually lost... call it creative manufacturer labelling)
posted by dorian at 6:05 AM on November 21, 2014
computer management -> storage -> disk management:
- right-click G: and select "Extend Volume..."
(and, on a formatted 3TB drive, the "lost" 80GB very likely isn't actually lost... call it creative manufacturer labelling)
posted by dorian at 6:05 AM on November 21, 2014
Response by poster: Thanks. I've done this and I end up with a 2TB NTFS partition plus an unallocated 745GB partition on that same drive. It won't make it bigger than 2TB ('extend volume' is greyed out and not a choice)
posted by peacay at 6:08 AM on November 21, 2014
posted by peacay at 6:08 AM on November 21, 2014
You can however chain individual partitions together to make a dynamic disk (depending on which version of Windows you have).
posted by pipeski at 6:16 AM on November 21, 2014
posted by pipeski at 6:16 AM on November 21, 2014
I did something similar to this some time ago. I think you need to convert the drive from MBR to GPT. It's a right click on the drive listing in Disk Management.
posted by CincyBlues at 6:35 AM on November 21, 2014
posted by CincyBlues at 6:35 AM on November 21, 2014
Response by poster: The option to convert to GPT is greyed out when I right click it in the only place I can see that option even appearing -- which is on disk labels on the far left side of the disk management screen. That's the same for all of the drives too.
posted by peacay at 6:42 AM on November 21, 2014
posted by peacay at 6:42 AM on November 21, 2014
Best answer: ** all the data on the drive will be deleted following these instructions **
In disk management:
Delete all the partitions on the drive such that it shows the full size as unallocated, then right click the drive on the left and the option to convert to GPT should be available. Then you can create ntfs partition that spans the entire drive.
MBR partition tables (the old way) can only support up to 2TB partitions, its not a NTFS limit. You need GPT partitioning for 2TB and larger partitions. Regular bios may not be able to boot to a GPT disk though, you usually need a newer EFI enabled firmware on the motherboard to boot to GPT. A secondary storage disk will work fine as GPT even on an older machine.
posted by TheAdamist at 7:17 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
In disk management:
Delete all the partitions on the drive such that it shows the full size as unallocated, then right click the drive on the left and the option to convert to GPT should be available. Then you can create ntfs partition that spans the entire drive.
MBR partition tables (the old way) can only support up to 2TB partitions, its not a NTFS limit. You need GPT partitioning for 2TB and larger partitions. Regular bios may not be able to boot to a GPT disk though, you usually need a newer EFI enabled firmware on the motherboard to boot to GPT. A secondary storage disk will work fine as GPT even on an older machine.
posted by TheAdamist at 7:17 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Thanks everyone and particularly TheAdamist. It worked perfectly and fast. Yay! A new 2.79439GB backup drive.
posted by peacay at 7:24 AM on November 21, 2014
posted by peacay at 7:24 AM on November 21, 2014
Best answer: NTFS has a maximum volume size of 2TB
Not so. Current implementations of NTFS allow for volumes as big as 232 clusters, and a cluster can be as big as 64KiB; that works out to 256TiB = 281TB. With standard 4KiB clusters the limit is 16TiB = 17.6TB.
The "2TB" limit comes from the MBR partition table format, which uses 32-bit logical block addresses; a logical block is 512 bytes, so the maximum disk space an MBR partition table can subdivide is 232 × 512 bytes = 2TiB = 2.2TB.
GPT partitioning uses 64-bit logical block addresses and will therefore partition disks that wouldn't physically fit on planet Earth.
Windows won't boot off a GPT drive natively except via UEFI firmware, but all versions since Windows Vista will happily work with GPT on non-boot drives.
The option to convert to GPT is greyed out
That's because Windows doesn't want to deal with all the bogus partition alignment schemes that have grown up around MBR partitioning, so it won't even try to migrate an existing MBR partitioning to GPT. You have to remove all existing partitions before it will let you make a new GPT disk label.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
Not so. Current implementations of NTFS allow for volumes as big as 232 clusters, and a cluster can be as big as 64KiB; that works out to 256TiB = 281TB. With standard 4KiB clusters the limit is 16TiB = 17.6TB.
The "2TB" limit comes from the MBR partition table format, which uses 32-bit logical block addresses; a logical block is 512 bytes, so the maximum disk space an MBR partition table can subdivide is 232 × 512 bytes = 2TiB = 2.2TB.
GPT partitioning uses 64-bit logical block addresses and will therefore partition disks that wouldn't physically fit on planet Earth.
Windows won't boot off a GPT drive natively except via UEFI firmware, but all versions since Windows Vista will happily work with GPT on non-boot drives.
The option to convert to GPT is greyed out
That's because Windows doesn't want to deal with all the bogus partition alignment schemes that have grown up around MBR partitioning, so it won't even try to migrate an existing MBR partitioning to GPT. You have to remove all existing partitions before it will let you make a new GPT disk label.
posted by flabdablet at 7:27 AM on November 21, 2014 [1 favorite]
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posted by devnull at 5:20 AM on November 21, 2014