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How can I format a drive using the GPT format on OS X?

How can I format a drive using the GPT format on OS X? I don't see this option in Disk Tools.

Convert a GPT disk to MBR from XP

So I took some files with me on my external HDD while going on vacation. Through a series of events, I ended up storing the data in a NTFS formatted partition defined in a GUID Partition Table. The only computer I have is a Windows XP home box, which does not have native support for reading GPT's. So far everything I have read online suggests wiping the disk and reformmating to MBR. Is there a way to convert it without wiping out the data or to access the data as is?

what is difference between gpt partition and mbr partition and where structure differs?

Where GPT table using and MBR partition table using. Windows 8 installing and booting in UEFI mode so it is supporting GPT partition style so we can create 128 primary partitions using windows8? can anybody help me clearly to come out from this confusion?

Partitions on GPT disk are not in the recommended order?

I want to install a clean RTM Windows 8.0 on a laptop that came with OEM Windows 8.0 pre-installed. I have a working ISO image on DVD. The problem is that the setup program complains about "recommended order" for a GPT disk.

The partitions on the disk selected for installation are not in the recommended order. For additional information about installing to GPT disks go to the Microsoft website (www.microsoft.com) and search for GPT.

Do you want to proceed with installation?

I can obviously select to ignore it and install anyway! But what does it mean? What will the consequences be if I select to continue? Will I loose any partition?

Screenshots

Update

I ignored the warning, or whatever you want to call that, and Windows 8.0 installed successfully. No partitions were lost in the process. You can see that by the screenshot below.

You can also see that the partition layout is the same as before. In other words partitions have not been moved and reordered to fit the ideal GPT partition order as described by MS articles posted by Rod in the answer below.

Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 hard drive not recognized by Linux, causes fdisk to hang

I'm running Kubuntu 12.04. I have a brand new, never used Seagate 3TB ST3000DM001 hard drive. It's an internal drive. I installed it in a USB enclosure.

When I connect it to my PC, nothing happens automatically. When I run sudo fdisk -l, fdisk hangs (without reporting this drive) until I disconnect this drive from the USB port. blkid won't report it either.

I tried connecting it to both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports on my PC. I got the same result either way. I tried two different USB enclosures with the same result.

If I take the same drive, same enclosure and connect it to a Windows 7 laptop, it is recognized automatically as a USB mass storage device.

I want to format the drive (probably ext4) and copy files to it. I have another drive, also in a USB enclosure, that is connected via USB 3.0 to this PC and it works fine. It's a 2.0 TB Samsung HDD. I plan to copy files from the 2TB to the 3TB drive, once I get this issue resolved.

My motherboard is an Asus P8B WS LGA1155/ Intel C206/ Quad CrossFireX/ SATA3&USB3.0/ A&2GbE/ ATX. Linux kernel is 3.2.

dmesg output from multiple connection attempts:

[43595.344419] usb 2-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[43605.570093] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
[43605.570435] scsi6 : usb-storage 2-1.1:1.0
[43605.570665] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[43605.570673] USB Mass Storage support registered.
[43606.566344] scsi 6:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ST3000DM 001-9YN166       CC4C PQ: 0 ANSI: 0
[43606.568089] sd 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[43606.569510] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[43606.569884] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] 5860533168 512-byte logical blocks: (3.00 TB/2.72 TiB)
[43606.572883] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[43606.572892] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 23 00 00 00
[43606.574012] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[43606.574024] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[43606.574857] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Very big device. Trying to use READ CAPACITY(16).
[43606.576733] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[43606.576740] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[43636.913914] usb 2-1.1: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[43667.845759] usb 2-1.1: reset high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[43674.904939] usb 2-1.1: USB disconnect, device number 4
[43674.912044] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Unhandled error code
[43674.912055] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb]  Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[43674.912065] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] CDB: Read(10): 28 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00
[43674.912085] end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0
[43674.912094] quiet_error: 6 callbacks suppressed
[43674.912099] Buffer I/O error on device sdb, logical block 0
[43674.912242] ldm_validate_partition_table(): Disk read failed.
[43674.912295] Dev sdb: unable to read RDB block 0
[43674.912377]  sdb: unable to read partition table
[43674.912718] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] READ CAPACITY failed
[43674.912731] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb]  Result: hostbyte=DID_NO_CONNECT driverbyte=DRIVER_OK
[43674.912739] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Sense not available.
[43674.913479] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page present
[43674.913487] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
[43674.913492] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk

Win8x64, after format/upgrade from Win7x86, "GPT Protective Partition" on secondary drive

I backed up all important data prior to formatting the C: drive, but I cannot read the backup drive after reinstalling Windows. More details provided after the screenshots.

Additionally

As you can see, there are three physical disks in this system:
- 1TB System (C:) drive.
- 0.5TB basic MBR disk (D:) for general storage.
- 3TB basic disk with a single 3TB GPT partition (E:) for general storage.

Since the D: drive did not have enough free space, I used the 3TB GPT E: drive to backup everything I needed from the C: drive before formatting.

The 3TB E: drive was initialized as GPT and formatted as NTFS using the disk management GUI from Windows 7 Ultimate x86 while it was still installed. However, after formatting the C: drive and installing Windows 8 Enterprise x64, I get the "GPT Protective Partition" problem shown in the screenshot above. Almost all options in the right-click menus are greyed out, so I don't even know where to begin.

I've found a lot of interesting ideas on the internet, but nothing that really fits my situation.

If my understanding is correct, the 2TB "Protective" partition is a fake partition that the GPT system emulates. The idea is, if your system cannot read GPT, and can only read MBR, it will see this fake 2TB MBR partition, so you don't accidentally format it thinking it's empty - hence "protective."

This leads me to the main questions:
- Why would Windows 8 Enterprise x64 be unable to read GPT drives, while Windows 7 Ultimate x86 had no problems whatsoever creating and using this partition?
- How can I get Windows 8 Enterprise x64 to read this drive properly as GPT, so I can recover the backup data stored there?

EDIT:
Here's the GPT and MPR data for the disk, produced by gdisk. The fact that it says all 2.7 TB are "free sectors" worries me a bit, as the disk should be quite full of stored files. Prior to re-installing Windows, this drive functioned flawlessly as a GPT disk with a single 2.7 TB basic non-boot partition.

Free program to clone 3TB hard drive to another one with USB3 support in Windows 7?

All I'm trying to do is clone one WD 3TB GPT drive to another identical drive. One is internal, one is attached with a USB 3.0 dock. I'm copying from internal to external drive.

1. Macrium Reflect Free doesn't recognize either of the 3TB drives.
2. DriveImage XML will see both drives (if run as administrator), but will not list the USB 3 drive as a target drive when it's time to pick the target drive.
3. Ease US free edition doesn't support over 1TB.
4. Paragon's software doesn't seem to support drives the use GPT.
5. Clonezilla runs on a live CD, so I'd have to shut down my computer for hours while it copies the drive.

I just cannot believe that something so incredibly simple as cloning one drive to another can't be done, because software can't handle > 2TB GPT partitions or USB 3.0 connections. I'm absolutely baffled that such a basic operation isn't included in an operating system like Windows 7 (like how it can't mount an ISO, even though Microsoft distributes everything as ISO [Windows 8 supports it finally]). It's sad.

BTW, The only "killer app" I could find to clone my HDD to SSD was "Paragon Migrate OS to SSD", which copied my OS, shrunk the partition, and aligned the partition properly for SSD with like 2 clicks. I swapped in the new drive after about 11 minutes of copying, and it booted on the first shot, even though I cloned it with a windows update restart pending. I was impressed.

Windows (using UEFI boot on GPT disk) will no longer boot after adding an MBR hard disk

I have recently installed Windows 7 64 bit on a new SSD using UEFI boot and GPT. The system worked fine. After adding my old system HD to the system (that uses MBR), Windows will no longer boot correctly: When booting from the SSD, the normal boot screen appears and Windows tells me that it is loading files. Then the boot screen disappears and I am in an EFI shell, unable to boot. When I unplug the old HD, Windows boots again without complaints.

Can I somehow boot with this configuration without formating my old hard disk first?

I have an MSI Z77-G65A board. It is configured for UEFI boot, booting from the SSD. Both drives are set as independent HDs (no accidently activated RAID). The SSD is connected to a SATA-6G port and the old drive to a SATA-3G port.

Can only see 1.6 tb with an 4 x 4tb raid 0

Im trying to have window see my raid 0 array. Please also note that I did research on google before coming on here.

Ok so i just bought a z87-deluxe Dual and trying to set 4 x 4tb drive in a raid 0

Im running window 7.

The wierd thing now is that when im in the bios i see that each drive are 4 tb and that they are actuly set as a raid 0 so from my understanding window should see only one drive that is 14.5 tb.

But instead I see 4 drive of 1.6 tb. Here is what post is outputing

and here we can see what i see in device manager.

any one have an idea ?

GParted errors on MBR Disk, Claims it's GPT. (It's mistaken, but why?)

It's very tempting for me to go on a rant here about GParted and Linux, but I'll do my best to avoid it. :)

Question:

Why does GParted claim that my disk is corrupted and GPT, whereas the Disk Utility thinks everything is fine?

My only partition on the disk (NTFS) has Windows 7 x64 on it, and has absolutely no problems -- I never had any problems with it, and I ran CheckDisk to make sure.

Why is GParted behaving this way?

(I was going to post this on AskUbuntu, but since GParted isn't really limited to Ubuntu, I posted it here. I'm using Ubuntu 11.04 x64's boot disc.)

Tried to use my 3TB drive in a USB enclosure, now reports only 746GB even internally [duplicate]

I have two 3TB Hitachi 5k3000 Desktar drives that I want to use as data drives, not boot drives. When I was originally trying to install them I wanted to mirror them using my hardware raid but I couldn't get them recognized, my motherboard is pretty old (P5N32-SLI) but the BIOS and RAID firmware are as up to date as possible.

Whilst trying to get the drives recognized I found you need to initialize them to GPT to see past the 2.2TB barrier, I tried initializing one in Windows (7 x64) via a USB drive enclosure and even though it was set to GPT it never reported the correct size only 746GB.

Next, I tried initializing the other disk connected via the internal SATA ports on my motherboard and it actually reported the correct size (in MBR mode it reported 2.2TB and 746GB, when I switched to GPT it showed one continuous volume.) However, now I can't get my other one to reinitialize, I tried switching it back to MBR but that did not make a difference. I suspect Windows is caching something about this drive that I'm not seeing, but would greatly appreciate some guidance.

Edit: I don't want to use these with my USB enclosure, I want them internal. One drive does work as expected internally, just the one I originally tried to initialize via the enclosure won't re-initialize internally with the correct space.

Windows on a hybrid MBR/GPT

I thought I'd finally relegated Windows to life inside a virtual machine, but alas, I came across some games I'd like to play that just won't do in that setup. In the days since Windows last occupied its own specified chunk of my disk I've done a lot of flipping around with different OSes and Linux distributions, and it turned out that while I had free space, I was at the maximum number of partitions supported by MBR partition tables. So, believing that it should Just Work® here in the 21st century and having performed a cursory examination of Google that indicated it should work, I converted over to a GUID partition table (GPT) and attempted to install Windows 7. Lo and behold, Windows 7 only works with GPTs on EFI systems, and mine uses BIOS. I should have noticed this in my earlier research, but that would have just been too easy.

So, I'm left with the choice of converting back to MBR and trying to jigger my partition layout around such that I can make one for Windows, or going with a hybrid MBR. The latter sounds more appealing. Unfortunately, there are lots of scary warnings about hybrid MBRs on the Internet, so I have a few questions.

Will Windows do something ugly to my bootloader since it's really on GPT but it will see MBR? Will that require more repair than booting from a LiveCD and running grub-install? Is there anything I need to avoid other than making sure I never touch partitioning tools on Windows? Will my computer explode? Would lots of headaches be saved if I just switched back to MBR? (I understand that Macs use hybrid MBRs with Boot Camp, so hopefully this won't be as difficult as I'm making it out to be.)

Running the same Windows both in KVM and physical

I have kind of an advanced question for you, I would like to install Windows on my hard drive (which is GPT formatted) but I would like to be also able to run it in KVM. To clarify, the same Windows installation should be able to be booted physical (without any host) and virtually in KVM, using Arch Linux as the host. I used to do this with my old laptop, however the disk it was using was formatted using an MS-DOS partition table.

How can I accomplish this?

My PC has an UEFI-capable motherboard.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: One can use the custom BIOS images from the OVMF project to boot KVM with UEFI support: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/tianocore/index.php?title=OVMF However, Windows installer isn't working yet. It goes through the 'Loading files' and then fails.

Easiest way to use a > 2TB internal hard disk in Windows XP 32-bit?

I have an 3TB external disk and Windows XP 32 bit. It works as a USB 2 disk with its enclosure, but I want to use it as an internal SATA disk. I don't want to use it as a boot disk, only as a data disk. I understand that normally I need GPT (GUID partition table), and then I can't use Windows XP 32 bit anymore. I would prefer to avoid this. But what I did not understand by googling around is: can I partition the disk in 2 parts (so that each part is less than 2TB) with MBR and use it in Windows 32-bit? If yes, which tools do I need?

Intel Mac can't have more than 4 partitions?

I've read everywhere that you can't have more than 4 partitions because of GPT on intel Macs. But what happens if you make more than 4? On my iMac I have EFI, Macintosh HD, Windows, Linux, and Linux swap partitions and I am able to boot from all three operating systems with rEFIt. So, I have 5 partitions, so why does it work? I made the partitions with Snow Leopard's Disk Utility by the way.