[DESKTOP] Need help getting my new 4 T HD to work

[steve7233]

I bought a My book from Western Digital at Walmart today. I thought since it was designed to work with windows and mac, that I should have no trouble getting it to work... wrong!First Dolphin, could see the partion. It couldn't do anything ext something, I used kpartition manager to delete and repartition to BTRFS. Dolphin sees it but can't mount it. kpartition manager edited fstab to inclued it. I reebooted but still can't use it. Why can't dolphin enter since fstab can mount it? I have the recipt if I need to exchange for a different drive. Some one please help me figure this out.

I tried their web site but that is no help or at least I can't solve it with their information. The box says internet activation requiered that might just be for the backup program.

[steve7233]

I managed to access 3.6 Tib. I think most of the rest is hidden some how.

[steve7233]

Will this help? I suspect a slight edit is needed to make it mount correctly.

[Snowhog]

I managed to access 3.6 Tib. I think most of the rest is hidden some how.

Not likely.

You do know, yes, that the listed size of a HD isn't the the same as the size reported as 'available'?

[steve7233]

They had a bunch of programs on it for backup and stuff.

[SpecialEd]

They had a bunch of programs on it for backup and stuff.

It could be full but it's still going to be read as 3.6TiB. Your forgetting the difference between Tib and TB.

[steve7233]

It could be full but it's still going to be read as 3.6TiB. Your forgetting the difference between Tib and TB.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]7783[/ATTACH]

Actually, I never looked up what TiB and MiB are. When I was in school we learned about KB, MB, GB, and TB. They started this 'X'iB stuff after I graduated in 84. Why do they use such huge round off errors in translation? Thats about a 3 Gig loss! Why advertise 4 TB when it is only 3.6 TB? They should just say 3.5 TB. That would be closer to the truth.

[Snowhog]

Take a look at this Q&A: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...dd-4175489686/

[steve7233]

Take a look at this Q&A: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...dd-4175489686/

That last comment on there says that Linux EXT filesystems reserve 5% so the user can log in and rescue the system if the drive gets full. Does BTRFS do that and if so then can I adjust it so it doesn't do that on a data partition. Altho technical BTRFS is partitionless. I am using the drive as a steam liabrary. I will probably fill it in a few years and have to buy another big drive. I got what I could afford.

[jglen490]

BTRFS may be partitionless, but the drive itself still has structure, even before the OS gets a hold of it and lays in a filesystem. And as post #12 in that thread correctly stated

The difference between 1000^N and 1024^N has become pretty large at N=4. Eventually, the rated capacity of storage devices will have nothing to do with the size reported by the OS.

A hard drive is not used "raw", even if it's set up in a single, continuous, contiguous unit. And the difference between the "labelled" size on the box, the actual space, and the usable space have always been different - all the way from floppies to today's multi-terabyte drives.