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    Partition greater than 2TB on L502x

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by SilverHawk1984, Jan 10, 2014.

  1. SilverHawk1984

    SilverHawk1984 Newbie

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    Hi all,

    I have some problems with my Dell XPS L502x regarding partitions greater than 2TB.

    My system:
    i7-2720QM
    8GB RAM
    GT540m
    Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB (MBR)
    before original Bios A12,
    now "Custom voltage moded A12 bios mod for gt540m with advanced menus for L502X" from http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/635536-l502x-modded-bioses-download-gpu-voltages-more.html
    Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

    I just bought three 4TB HDD's from Seagate (Desktop HDD 4TB ST4000DM000) which I want to put into my external RAID hard drive housing (Sharkoon 5-BAY RAID Box) to run them under RAID5 mode. Now I can't create a partition greater than 2TB with EaseUS Partition Master (Edition Server, allows partitions bigger than 2tb). Win7's disk management even won't show the right disk size. The RAID controller is connected to the laptop via USB3.

    Now I took a external 2.5''/3.5'' SATA HDD docking station connected via USB2 and I still can't create partitions greater than 2TB on only single 4TB hard disk.


    Does anyone have an idea for my problem? Could it be, that I won't work because of the missing UEFI function of the L502x. But the new flashed bios do have now an option to activate it.
    I already called dell support, but they couldn't help me.


    Thank you all!
     
    SilverHawk1984, Jan 10, 2014
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  2. gull_s_777

    gull_s_777 Notebook Consultant

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    I am no expert, but have you initialized the drives as GPT???
    As in old MBR mode, it will be limited to 2.2TB.
     
    gull_s_777, Jan 17, 2014
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  3. SilverHawk1984

    SilverHawk1984 Newbie

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    Yes, I tried both MBR and GPT, neither of both is working.
     
    SilverHawk1984, Jan 21, 2014
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  4. SilverHawk1984

    SilverHawk1984 Newbie

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    It is working now!!!

    I don't know how, but today I tried all the steps again, after leaving everything in a corner for a week.

    I might think I forgot to change the cluster size from 'automatic' to something >= 8kb and that is why I couldn't increase the partition size greater than 2GB. Of course this works only with GPT.

    Now I have 7.27TB on RAID5 adaptable up to ~16TB :)
     
    SilverHawk1984, Jan 21, 2014
    #4