I want to expand my media player’s storage with a 4 TB external HDD. The media player does not support GPT, however, just MBR.
I read that MBR only allows a maximum partition size of 2 TB. Are external HDDs any different in that regard?
Can I use external HDDs larger than 2 TB with my media player?
Could I, for example, partition the HDD in two different 2TB partitions so the device could access them separately?
Does the external HDD even need MBR as boot record or could I use GPT on it for it to still work with the OS?
Best Answer
With MBR, the maximum disk size is 2 TB. It can work on larger disks, too, but you won’t be able to use anything beyond the first 2 TB. However, this only applies to disks with 512-byte sectors (because, incidentally, 512 byte * 2^32 = 2 TB).
There are external disks available which present themselves as disks with 4096-byte sectors. On these disks, MBR can support up to 16 TB. There might also be real (without 512-byte sector emulation) 4K disks by now.
There is, however, the matter of your device. On its info page, there are some important points:
While they write “internal”, there’s no reason this wouldn’t apply to every disk you connect to the player. After all, the player isn’t booting from this disk. So it definitely doesn’t support GPT.
You may, however, be able to use one of the aforementioned 4K disks.