DietPi sees only 561GB out of 4.6 TB external drive

Troubleshooting
1

Hello,

recently I have bought a new Seagate Expansion drive with the capacity of 5TB. I’ve installed DietPi x64 on it through etcher. After the install, I resized the drive in disk manager but it still only shows 561.3 GB available of of 4.6TB possible. What can I do to make it work?

Here is the outcome from cat /var/tmp/dietpi/logs/fs_partition_resize.log:

root@DietPi:~# cat /var/tmp/dietpi/logs/fs_partition_resize.log
Removed /etc/systemd/system/local-fs.target.wants/dietpi-fs_partition_resize.ser                                                        vice.
The size of this disk is 4.6 TiB (5000981077504 bytes). DOS partition table form                                                        at cannot be used on drives for volumes larger than 2199023255040 bytes for 512-                                                        byte sectors. Use GUID partition table format (GPT).
Disk /dev/sda: 4.6 TiB, 5000981077504 bytes, 9767541167 sectors
Disk model: Expansion
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xad09722e

Old situation:

Device     Boot  Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1         8192     532479     524288   256M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2       532480 1177606574 1177074095 561.3G 83 Linux

/dev/sda2:
New situation:
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xad09722e

Device     Boot  Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1         8192     532479     524288   256M  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2       532480 1177606574 1177074095 561.3G 83 Linux

The partition table has been altered.
resize2fs 1.44.5 (15-Dec-2018)
The filesystem is already 147134261 (4k) blocks long.  Nothing to do!
2

Hi,

you could connect your HDD to your computer and use a tool like GParted to check situation and resize

https://gparted.org/

3

I’ve found the problem - it’s the limitation of the MBR partition (2TB max). Nevertheless, I do not want to reformat the drive completely as to change it to GPT partition. Is there a way to remain on my current dietpi installation and somehow manage to use all of the provided capacity (4.6 TB)? Maybe I can move the boo partition to a smaller USB stick and somehow transfer the 5TB drive into a GPT without loosing the data on it?

4

I found an older post on the web https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=241602

not sure if it is still working. But seems gdisk could do what you are looking for.

5

Use exfat

fat32 is limited in it’s size due to lack of addressing capability…exfat fixes that (this is why large USB drives use exfat)

also exfat is cross compatible with linux, windows, and MAC
https://helpdeskgeek.com/help-desk/what-is-the-best-format-for-external-hard-drives-pros-cons-of-each/

You should be able to convert to exfat without losing data
https://www.diskpart.com/articles/convert-fat32-to-exfat-0310.html (seems to be a windows only converter, but should work)
However it seems the safest bet is to back up all the data, then do a complete re-format :frowning: