#FORMAT WD EASYSTORE FOR WINDOWS XP FULL#
#FORMAT WD EASYSTORE FOR WINDOWS XP WINDOWS 7#
#FORMAT WD EASYSTORE FOR WINDOWS XP DOWNLOAD#

XP Compatible: This option configures the drive for 4096 byte logical sectors, and creates an MBR partition table.

#FORMAT WD EASYSTORE FOR WINDOWS XP WINDOWS 7#

?When run in Windows 7, or in later version of Windows but with Windows 7 compatibility mode, the tool will present two configuration options on the вЂњFormat your WD external driveвЂќ screen: ?This version of the tool does not work correctly under Windows XP, so I recommend running the tool in Windows 7 or later.

#FORMAT WD EASYSTORE FOR WINDOWS XP DOWNLOAD#

The WD Quick Formatter tool (version 2.0.0.65 available for download as of this writing) can enable or disable the sector size translation.

?The newer GPT partition table format supported in Windows Vista and later does not have the 32-bit limitation, and can support disks larger than 2 TB regardless of the sector size. (2^32 sectors x 4096 bytes/sector is 16 TB) ?Windows XP only supports MBR partition tables, and so 4096 byte logical sectors are the only way to use all of the space on a drive over 2 TB in Windows XP. ?With 4096 byte logical sectors, an MBR partition cable can use up to 16 TB of a drive. ?2^32 sectors x 512 bytes/sector is 2 TB. ?ThatвЂ™s because MBR table entries are 32 bits with a max of 2^32 or 4,294,967,296 sectors. With 512 byte logical sectors, an MBR partition table could only use up to 2 TB of a drive. ?When configured for 4096 byte logical sectors, the USB-to-SATA bridge in the enclosure does a translation between 512 byte logical sectors at the SATA interface to the internal drive and 4096 byte logical sectors at the USB interface to the host computer. Is there a way to force 4096/4096 for an MSDOS partition table (either from Linux or Windows) so that I can create a 3TB partition that perfectly matches my source disk?ДЄnswer: Many Western Digital external USB drives over 2 TB (including at least some My Book, My Book Essential, Elements, and Easystore drives) can be configured for either 512 byte logical sectors or 4096 byte logical sectors using the WD Quick Formatter tool. Using GPT is my fall-back option, but it creates a partition that is slightly smaller than the NTFS partition, so I wouldnвЂ™t be able to just dd the filesystem on the partition. Given that one of my drives is running at 4096/4096 then this question doesn t hold true for my case. IвЂ™ve tried various commands (dd of the first few sectors to partition table, parted, fdisk, gparted, Windows XP Manage and Windows 7 Manage ) but end up with either 2TB max limits or ~300GB partitions that thought they were 3TB when they were created. My problem is that I m trying to copy to the 512/4096 drive, but I can t create a large enough partition because of the limits of the MSDOS partition table with 512 byte (logical) sectors. Both drives were bought at the same time, both use MSDOS partition table, but one shows logical/physical sector sizes of 4096/4096 and the other shows 512/4096.

There are lots of small files, so running cp would be even slower than copying 3TB over USB using dd. I want the other to be a backup of that data.

#FORMAT WD EASYSTORE FOR WINDOWS XP FULL#

One contains nearly the full 3TB of data.

Question: I have two supposedly identical 3TB Western Digital USB hard disk drives.

Format wd easystore for windows xp