3Tb WD model? ...3 questions - a simple explanation of exceeding 2Tb please

WD External and Portable SSD Portable SSD
1

Hi guys

I have purchased a couple of the 3Tb My Passports and I have a couple of questions. I would really value a couple of simple explanations.

  1. Firstly, I thought that NTFS formatting has a limit of 2Tb on these devices.
    So, does that mean it has been formatted using exFAT? I am not sure if ‘extFAT’ is a ‘Windows Name’ for GPT formatting?

  2. Secondly, if I use Windows (10) Administrative Tools to format the whole WD drive, would that be formatted exFAT ?.

  3. Finally, will any WD backup software be affected by exceeding the 2Tb limit?

Thanks in advance for anyone who can spare time for a simple explanation!

2

Hello there,

To answer your questions:

1- NTFS does support larger drives than 2 TB, exFAT also supports this, GPT is the partition table, and exFAT refers to the file system.

2- You can format in exFAt and also in NTFS.

3- This should not be an issue, the only thing that can be a issue is if the drive is formatted in a exFAT file system, if the drive is formatted in NTFS there should not be a problem.

Hope this helps.

3

Thank you ArMak for a clear reply.
I guess the 3Tb WD drives all come formatted NTFS.

I will do some reading up on understanding GPT. I think this element confused me.

Boggle

4

And the other way to exceed 2TB … WD use 4K Advanced Format

and more info here

as an example, i have a 3TB and 4TB WD Elements HDD’s … both are MBR Partitioned and formatted NTFS. So these drives even work fine (full capacity) on olders OS’s eg. WinXP 32Bit

5

Thanks Joey. I will gen up on it.