Formatting HD

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  • 4. Instruction Articles

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1st Official Post

    #1:

    The official link to format an external storage device shows NTFS using MBR, yet GPT is also mentioned. Is NTFS with GPT (which would allow partitions greater than 2Tb) supported, or is NTFS using MBR the only supported formatting method (thus limiting a recording device to a max of 2Tb)?

    #2:

    As a generality, given programming recorded varies greatly in resolution, how many hours of recording of the more common higher definition format used in say movies, would one expect from 1Tb of storage?

    #3:

    Is there something compelling about Rufus? Any reason I can't just format to NTFS under Windows?

    Thank you!

    -d

    • Official Post

    1. You mean the article with Rufus tool from me? Sure, you can try to use GPT instead of MBR if your hdd is bigger than 2Tb but i`m not sure if this will work perfectly, didn`t tested yet hdd`s over 2TB for Formuler boxes. Try and test, if the hdd is later recognised (partition for recording) is all ok.

    2. Because of different bitrates this varies extremely, so you can not say exactly how much. For 98% of users is 1TB more than enough. Iptv is not same like Cable or Sat. it uses more compressed files and streams.

    3. Rufus do it just good and clean, that`s all. You can also use Windows for formatting if this format always correctly :winking_face:

    I can tell you this: Rufus does not recognize a 5TB Seagate Plus drive. In, fact it does not detect any HDD devices attached. Meanwhile Windows 10 sees it just fine. If I hear anything back from Peter at Rufus.ie I'll update the post.

    Update #1

    After brief testing, it appears that:

    * Windows 10 formatting auto selects GPT if it see's a partition larger than 2TB.

    * Z8 Pro sees the drive and seems to happily record to it, so at least so far NTFS/GPT seems to work.

    Update #2:

    Well, the handle more than one stream is a real disappointment once you start recording in any way, but certainly the HDD is running along just fine.

    Peter from Rufus got back to me. We should all be advised that formatting HDD is not supported (at least as of this writing) via rufus, and that's the root of some of the issue. This can be worked around, and follows is the link from him to address the problem

    Update #3

    I've recorded a number of shows and movies. At present the most space intensive required 2GB per hour. There may be something with higher density of course, but as an overal experience that seems very very unlikely. This equates to 500 hours or recording per terabyte of capacity.


    https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/…is_not_detected

    Edited 5 times, last by dafish: updated with more testing (March 27, 2021 at 11:53 PM).