Jim wrote:

On 16/10/2016 23:42, VanguardLH wrote:
Jim wrote:

I have used EaseUS Partition Master 11.9 to format my WD Green to the
NTFS format, is this safe to do (safe as in drive not breaking down, and
losing data) or should i format to the GPT format?

Jim

There is no GPT *file* format. If you want to use a partition then
decide on what *file system* you want inside of it, like NTFS. GPT is
the *partitioning scheme*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

In that case how does it fit when wiki says "Because partition tables on
master boot record (MBR) disks support only partition sizes up to 2 TB,
dynamic or GPT volumes must be used to create NTFS volumes over 2 TB"
My boot drives are small ssd's running mbr and these bigger 4TB drives
are only for media storage or have i got the wrong end of the stick (not
unusual i know)

Under MBA, the partition table has 4 partition records. Each partition
record is 16 bytes long, or 128 bits long. No, you don't get to address
2^128 - 1 sectors (of 512 bytes each). Some of those bytes are for
purposes other than addressing. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record#PTE

Your HDD can have a total capacity far exceeding what is addressable by
the MBR. When you access a file in the file system (e.g., NTFS), it
still must get translated to a sector on the HDD. So you hit the
limitation of partition size by the MBR's partition records before you
hit the max file system's file size. NTFS has a theoretically maximum
file (not partition) size of 16 exabytes you can't find an HDD/SDD
anywhere near that size plus Windows itself places limites on volumes.
It looks like you don't know what are dynamic volumes or the difference
between BIOS and UEFI as the firmware in the mobo.

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm
(Those are max file sizes by the file system, not max partition sizes.)

I'm pretty sure that if you use Easeus Partition Master to create a
partition larger than 2 TB that it will automatically attempt to create
it as a GPT partition - and that is BEFORE it even starts the format of
the partition to lay down a file system. You have to create the
partition BEFORE you can lay down a file system inside of it. However,
going beyond 2TB for partition size depends on your hardware's firmware.
BIOS only supports MBR. UEFI allows the allocation of GPT partitions.
If you want GPT partitions, your computer must use UEFI, not the old MBR
BIOS. That is, if you want to leave MBR and use GPT then you need to
leave BIOS and have EFI-compliant hardware. You can create GPT
partitions under UEFI. You cannot create GPT partitions with MBR BIOS.

You never identified the make and model of the motherboard for anyone
else to know if it only supports the old BIOS model or the newer UEFI
model. For GPT partitions, you'll need your mobo hardware to support
UEFI. GPT = GUID Partition Table, and GUIDs are definable only in UEFI.
GPT is part of the UEFI specification.