cannot choose "Master Boot Record"

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Level 1

50 points

cannot choose "Master Boot Record"

I have a 3TB Seagate external drive that I've been using for a while that I need to re-purpose. I have to format it as FAT32/MBR but wehen I go into Disk Utility, select the drive, select partition, and select "1 Partition" and then "Options" I cannot select the Master Boot Record option, only the GUID or Apple Partition.

If I leave the drive on GUID, then it will not be seen by either the Playstation or the Wii.

I've also tried this on a Mac OS 10.7 laptop with only USB2, with the same results.

Am I going to have to haul this drive over to a Windows person? Or is the issue that the drive is 3TB instead of 2TB?

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 3TB Fusion, 24GB RAM

Posted on Jun 1, 2013 1:41 PM

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Answer 1

mende1

Level 10

93,538 points

Jun 1, 2013 1:43 PM in response to Syth

2.2 TB and bigger hard drives aren't supported by PCs with BIOS, that use MBR, so that's the reason why you can't choose MBR as its partition map.

The solution is to buy a smaller 1 or 2 TB hard drive, so you will be able to use MBR as its partition map

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,728 points

Jun 1, 2013 1:45 PM in response to Syth

MBR has a limit of 2^32 512KB logical blocks ~ 2TB.

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