Advice on Formatting 4TB drive. GPT with Basic or Dynamic Disk?

[blammm]

Hello fellow storage veterans in need of an advice.

So I just bought a new WD Green 4TB EZRX revision. This my first drive amounting more than 2TB. As my understanding what I've learn from school is that any drive that is larger than 2TB must be set as GPT instead of MBR.

Currently I have a 3x 2TB WD black running in basic disk on MBR mode with my current rig. So with this New 4TB drive I want it to have it on 2 partition.

e.g: Drive J:1TB, K:3TB

I'm not sure if GPT basic disk support more than 2TB for separate partitioning on a 4TB drive or should I set it to GPT dynamic disk if were to set with the example shown above.

 

[crystalnox]

Basic is fine. You can always do a quick format and try out both options yourself.

 

[Asure7]

Partition style is not the same as Disk type. Both Basic and Dynamic Disk can partition the way u want above, and can be either MBR/GPT.

In your case, you will want GPT since you want a partition size > 2TB.
Note that even though your hdd is 4TB, you can still use MBR if your partition size is not > 2TB. The 2TB limit refers to partition size, not harddisk size.

In most cases, Basic should suffice.
However, if you intend to do RAID configuration, you will need to choose Dynamic.


For more info: Basic and Dynamic Disks (Windows)

If you are going to use UEFI-based system like Windows 8, you MUST use GPT.
Moving forward, I feel GPT is the way to go (even if partition size < 2TB) as it is more robust against partition table corruption. However, you will need MBR if you intend to maintain compatibility with older OS like winXP.

 

[blammm]

I'll try GPT with basic disk first. I remember a friend of mine tried using MBR and it only detects it as 2TB instead of 4TB. He ended up using GPT with basic disk but he did not partition the drive though. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Gaiason]

I'll try GPT with basic disk first. I remember a friend of mine tried using MBR and it only detects it as 2TB instead of 4TB. He ended up using GPT with basic disk but he did not partition the drive though. Thanks for the feedback.

use GPT...

 

[blammm]

So GPT with basic disk does support partition drive more the 2TB. Problem solve

 

[mosmos]

I'll try GPT with basic disk first. I remember a friend of mine tried using MBR and it only detects it as 2TB instead of 4TB. He ended up using GPT with basic disk but he did not partition the drive though. Thanks for the feedback.

so which one would be better?

 

[blammm]

so which one would be better?

Initially I thought GPT with basic disk wont partition more than 2TB but tried it out it works and didn't run into any issue. How ever if you want to RAID dynamic disk is the way to go just like Asure7 mention.

 

[Kiwi8]

GPT basic disk supports more than one partition, in fact, far more than the 4 partitions limited under MBR basic disk.