New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

playdafunkimuzic · 2011-02-10 23:20:25

I just bought a new 1TB USB hard drive and plugged it in. It's telling me that it's a 10MB disk with 1.2M available. Any ideas?

ammon · 2011-02-11 00:10:30

How about posting partiton table?

Or formating drive?

I recommend gparted, it is in repo.

thisoldman · 2011-02-11 00:12:57

What program is saying it's a 10 MB disk? Have you checked with 'fdisk -l' or with gparted?

playdafunkimuzic · 2011-02-11 00:18:29

I checked with df and then with thunar... when I run fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x24796452

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1          662606      683083       10239    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Seems to be about right. I suppose I should just format it and create a working partition

edit: what's a good partition type for an external disk of this size that might need read/write capability in windows

Last edited by playdafunkimuzic (2011-02-11 00:22:08)

anonymous_user · 2011-02-11 01:57:58

If you're gonna use it in Windows, go for NTFS.

PIMPinator · 2011-02-12 11:30:56

anonymous_user wrote:

If you're gonna use it in Windows, go for NTFS.

Seconded, just make sure you use ntfs-3g when you're mounting it in arch. FAT32 sucks and has a 4GB filesize limit, NTFS is better if you're not using it with any devices that require FAT32.

wudu · 2011-02-12 11:39:46

Hi, nothing to do with the filesystem, look at the start of your partition, should be 63.

R00KIE · 2011-02-12 12:44:29

wudu wrote:

Hi, nothing to do with the filesystem, look at the start of your partition, should be 63.

It doesn't need to be 63 and if the drive has 4kB physical sectors then it shouldn't be 63, however it should always be a low value so the wasted space at the beginning is minimal.

Just delete that partition and create a new one with gparted and format it to ntfs, should do the trick. You might be able to format the whole drive as ntfs too, that means no partitions, but I don't know how well that will work.

wudu · 2011-02-12 16:48:58

You're right, should be low but don't have to be 63.

PIMPinator · 2011-02-13 04:26:38

When using gparted, since you're wiping the drive, rather than delete the partition you should create a new partition table first (msdos) then format all the space to NTFS.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-02-10 23:20:25

New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#2 2011-02-11 00:10:30

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#3 2011-02-11 00:12:57

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#4 2011-02-11 00:18:29

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#5 2011-02-11 01:57:58

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#6 2011-02-12 11:30:56

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#7 2011-02-12 11:39:46

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#8 2011-02-12 12:44:29

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#9 2011-02-12 16:48:58

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

#10 2011-02-13 04:26:38

Re: New external hard drive reporting to only have 10MB

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