2TB WD passport USB drive and WinXP

Opinions/Advice/Solution needed.

I ordered a 2TB WD "Passport" backup drive for a computer running WinXP.

I must have still been under anesthesia thinking,

1) XP would recognize such a large hard drive,

AND . . .

2) that this 2TB passport would NOT come GPT formatted which XP also does not recognize.

At this point upgrading the PC to Win7 or Win 10 is not an option.

I need to backup all current data on the XP's 500GB drive as well as an already full WD500GB "MY Book" external hard drive.

I'm thinking I have to remove the GPT type format (if XP is going to recognize it) and most likely that will mean 4 separate logical 500GB NTFS partitions or no?

Can I leave this passport intact at 2TB and reformat it to NTFS or at least separate logical 1TB partitioned NTFS drives?

Any input will be highly appreciated

Thanks Chris

 

Is this just a backup, or will you be finally putting the XP system down (permanently)?

In either case; I suggest you get two drives instead and format as needed to get the data copied to at least three locations (original and BU1 and BU2). Then keep one of those drives in a safe, off-site location.

If you have access to a DT system running a more modern O/S - connect all drives to that and make your backup(s) there.

I highly recommend NTFS format if you want all the metadata to stay intact. With an external drive, having more than two partitions is recommended - even it if works now; there may (possibly) come a time when it won't in a future system.

I also recommend FreeFileSync to make sure you have identical copies on all BU drives of your source DATA too.

Good luck.

 

So did the XP recognize the 2tb drive? That wasn't made clear here. We need to know that before it continue here. Partitioning a drive will loose drive space you don't gain you loose space. I wouldn't go NTFS unless you know what format it was in first from factory. MBR works fines on 2tb drives it's when you go bigger then 2tb it will have to be GPT format.

 

thanks tillerofthe earth and yes stormjumper.

I used CMD from "run" to go to a dos box, then "diskpart" to "clean" all partitions off of the drive, then partitioned the whole 2tb as NTFS and then WinXP recognized it fine. I left the 2tb WD passport as one drive(no logicals) and created a couple sub-folders. One for older backup drive (WD 500gb "My Book") and another for current "C:" drive!

thanks to the both of you for replies