What maximal size in TB for an external HDD formated ext3 ?

Mahelf

New Member
Hello,

I am a newbie here and I'm grateful to many skilled members who help us to better know and use our Freesat Foxsat-HDR.

However I searched all threads and couldn't find details about the maximal size in TB for an external HDD formated under ext3 with, for instance my PC's Paragon Hard Disk Manager software.

I presently use two 1.5 TB external HDDs connected through both USB sockets, they work fine and I can transfer everything I want from my internal drive (HD single-copy protected records included, e.g. H.M. Silver Jubilee's Concert tec) to these external HDDs.

However, because I save many series that are no more aired here in France (yes, I'm French and I prefer British TV programmes), they're almost full and I am considering the use of higher capacity external drives : 2 TB or even 3 TB.

Is it possible, provided I format them undr ext3 with my PC's Paragon Hard Disk Manager software ?

Humax phone support told me yesterday that the maximum size would be 1 TB, but I imagine that involves only HDD formating with the Humax itself, as explained in other threads.

So, is it possible to use the full capacity of a 3 TB external HDD formated in ext3 with Paragon HD Mgr ?

Many thanks in advance for your help, as soon as I get a reply I select the size of my new external drive to buy, because I urgently miss much storage...

Best regards,
Louis in France
 
I think the Foxsat will be very similar in this respect to the HDR-FOX. See Things Every... (click) section 12.

Thank you for your quick reply, Black Hole.
From the link you give, because I'm not a secialist I need some further explanation about herunder quotation :

"Drives Larger than 2TiB

It seems that the HD/HDR-FOX only recognises the first partition on an external HDD. Also, typically, drives physically larger than 2TiB require a different partition table structure because the traditional MS-DOS MBR cannot "point" to all the storage locations on larger drives, and the operating system in the HD/HDR-FOX is not compatible with other partition tables."

Does that mean that, if I connect a 3 TB HDD formated under ext3 with my PC's Paaragon HD Manager, only a part of these 3 TB will be used by my HUMAX ?
In that case, how much can I expect to use from these 3 TB?

Could you explain please. As you know, I'm French and I've got some problems to completely understand.

Many thanks in advance,
Louis in France
 
The quotes from other posts contained within Things Every... should tell you what you want to know, but in summary it seems that if you define a sector size larger than the standard 512 bytes when you format the drive (eg 4096 bytes), you should then be able to format and use drives up to 16TiB. Keeping with 512 byte sectors limits you to a 2TiB drive, or only using 2TiB within a larger drive.
 
Thank you very much, so I won't have to pile half a dozen of 1 or 1.5 TB external drives near my Humax !
Amitiés de France,
Louis
 
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