MacOS 10.8.4. HGST Hitachi 4GB drive. Want to partition into 4 or more partitions. Disk utility will not allow it. DU only allows 2 X 2GB partitions.
All else 'grayed out.' What gives? My other drives in my MacPro react normally to Disk Utility as per partitioning.
Thank you.
Patrick
2012 MacPro 3.06GHz
Just to add to this and for the benefit of others in the future, here's the max sizes which the various FileSystems can handle:
File System Format
Compatible With
Max Volume Size
HFS+
Mac OS X
DroboShare
16TB
NTFS
Windows 7/8, Vista, Server 2003/2008, and DroboShare
16TB
NTFS (XP Compatible)
All Windows and DroboShare
2TB
FAT32*
All Windows, Mac OS X, and DroboShare
2TB
EXT3
DroboShare, Linux
8TB**
* FAT32 is an older file system format that is generally less protective of your data than modern (journaled) file systems. It also delivers slower performance and imposes file-size limitations. Because of these drawbacks, Drobo does not recommend using the FAT32 file system option unless absolutely essential
** EXT3 is supported only for volume sizes of 1TB or 2TB on 1st and 2nd generation Drobos. However, customers have found that they are able to have volume sizes (LUNs) greater than 2TB by attending to two items:
- Ensuring the Linux kernel is 2.6.24 or greater
- Enabling the selection "Enable Block Layer-->Support for Large Block Devices"
Another thing that's just crossed my mind is that when I've had issues like this in the past, I usually get the drive manufacturerers software and give it a low level format. On macs though, you need to keep your eye out for this both as the EFI (basically the firmware) as well as the Recovery Partition (the installation media) is stored on the initial few partitions on the drive.
Glad you had it sorted out! 🙂
Theoretical Maximum size for HFS+ file system is actually 8 EB (8 million TB). 😎
Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits
In my experience this happens when drives come out from tthe factory formatted in a Windows format. I have a friend that by-passed the problem. Let me have some time more and when I see him I may answer.
Cheers
Simon
Are you wondering how to access Disk Management in your Windows 7 based PC Management utility?
Follow the instructions to access disk utility windows 7
disk utility
