Seagate Expansion Desktop Drive

[Dennis Haney]

Has anyone had success in using a Seagate expansion desktop drive for backup.  I have tried everything I can think of to get it to work and nothing has succeeded.  I can get the B2 to recognize it in it's NTFS state but when I attempt to format it to FAT32 the process ends quickly and the B2 no longer recognizes it.  It is a 3TB drive that has been partitioned into 2TB for FAT32.  

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dennis

[Mark Fishman]

The problem is that when the B2 tries to format, first it removes all existing partitions, then tries to create ONE partition that consumes the entire drive. It wants to format that partition as FAT32.

THAT WILL FAIL because a FAT32 partition is limited to 2TB.

You will have to partition and format a 2TB FAT32 partition using a computer, and do NOT attempt to reformat using the B2. There are third-party programs that will do this on MS-Windows, and I believe that Disk Utility can do it on a Mac. The partition table must be of MS-DOS type; don't use GPT.

[Dennis Haney]

Thanks, Mark, for the information.  I'm not certain what third-party program will work to make sure the partition table is of MS-DOS type.  I tried one, AEOMI, that partitioned the file as FAT32 but it still wasn't recognized by the B2.  I assume the table is GPT.

[Peter Lowham]

Hi there,

I use 'IM-Magic Partition Resizer' for formatting disks larger than 2TB and it will format to 'MBR'.  This works well with my B2s.

Regards,

Peter.

[Dennis Haney]

Thanks, Peter, I'll check it out!