[PLUG] Hard drive: size discrepancy

Tomas Kuchta tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com
Tue Nov 13 00:54:24 UTC 2018


How old is your disk with it's SATA controller? If it is newer than 15
years - yes, 2003 - then your computer with relatively recent Linux should
see it as 3TB disk without any issues.

The math you are working with has never been applicable this way. There
used to be LBA (or whatever it was called) partition size limit. That Linux
could work around those days by LVM.

Didn't you say, in your earlier post, that you are connecting the disk to
your new system from 2018? In that case all should work as intended.

Try to ask some of your Linux or windows buddies to plug it to their system
and see if you get different result. Alternatively, get yourself different
SATA cable and try it on Knoppix.

I see the frustration, but we are pretty off the chart in trying to find
made up reasons for your kind of behavior.

Perhaps also put the disk back to it's original enclosure and check if it
works as intended 3TB disk on Windows box before returning it.

Hope it is helpful,
Tomas

On Tue, Nov 13, 2018, 1:30 AM Galen Seitz <galens at seitzassoc.com wrote:

> On 11/11/2018 05:31 PM, Tomas Kuchta wrote:
> > Disks we're not limited to <3 TB on 32b systems. The only limit there
> ever
> > was old MS FAT.
>
> The 32 bit limit that was mentioned in an Ubuntu forum relates to some
> USB<->SATA converters.  Apparently some controllers have internal sector
> registers that are only 32 bits.
>
> Number of 512 byte sectors in 3 TB drive
> 3e12 / 512 = 5.9e9 sectors
>
> Assuming 32 bit wrapping (modulo 2^32)
> 5.9e9 - 2^32 = 1.6e9 sectors
>
> Drive size after wrapping
> 1.6e9 * 512 = 801 GB
>
>
> galen
> --
> Galen Seitz
> galens at seitzassoc.com
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