Use of WD Hi-Capacity Drive with Linux

Raybaby · 07-03-2016, 09:13 PM

Am considering buying WD hi-capacity external drive and installing Linux Mint. Should I expect a problem doing this? Not a techi whiz - just a plain ole user. Plan is to set boot up from ext drive and go ahead and let MS install Win 10 on main drive (now Win 7 Pro 64 bit)?
Appreciate any helpful advice....Thank you....Ray Borden. usicfund@aol.com

frankbell · 07-03-2016, 09:16 PM

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "hi-capacity," but I have had several WD external drives over the years and have gotten excellent service from all of them.

I currently have a 250GB, a 1TB, and a 2TB in use.

I can't speak to Windows 10, as I have avoided it in a most dedicated manner.

syg00 · 07-03-2016, 09:42 PM

I would format as gpt if greater than 2T.

cwizardone · 07-03-2016, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frankbell

......I have had several WD external drives over the years and have gotten excellent service from all of them.....

Ditto!

onebuck · 07-04-2016, 08:45 AM

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Raybaby

Am considering buying WD hi-capacity external drive and installing Linux Mint. Should I expect a problem doing this? Not a techi whiz - just a plain ole user. Plan is to set boot up from ext drive and go ahead and let MS install Win 10 on main drive (now Win 7 Pro 64 bit)?
Appreciate any helpful advice....Thank you....Ray Borden. usicfund@aol.com

First things first, backup anything you have on the main HDD(internal) before you do anything else if you have valued data on that drive.

You should not have any issues as long as you install your MS Windows first then attach the external drive for the Gnu/Linux install. Most modern Gnu/Linux installers should recognize that large footprint drive and allow you to select the filesystem to use, then format to setup the filesystem to use for the drive.

GPT & MBR;

Quote:

From http://www.disk-partition.com/articl...ion-style.html
About GPT and MBR

MBR and GPT are the format of hard disk. MBR is the abbreviation of master bootable record, and it only supports the maximum capacity with 2TB, up to four primary partitions, or three primary partitions plus one extended partition. Most of personal computer’s motherboard only supports BIOS and it is installed with MBR, so, for many users, they always install windows system on the MBR disk.
GPT is abbreviation of GUID partition table. It is a part of EFI, which is port between operating system and platform firmware. GPT can make use of a very large space that is more than 2TB limit of MBR disks. GPT disks allow an almost unlimited number of partitions. Each GPT partition has a unique identification GUID and a partition content type. And you can have more primary partitions. However, the Windows implementation restricts this to 128 partitions.
In terms of the description above, it seems that GPT disk is better than MBR, Unfortunately, the seldom of computers have EFI motherboard, not even mention make use of GPT disk. In the context of specific case, that may be the greatest of shortages in GPT disk. As mentioned above, many people can’t install windows system on GPT disk.

What’s the Difference Between GPT and MBR When Partitioning a Drive? is helpful information to understand the partition types and differences. Provides information for the partitions types.

Hope this helps.
Have fun & enjoy!

jefro · 07-05-2016, 03:45 PM

Hello and welcome to LQ.

There exists a real possibility that you can bork your install of windows in this exercise.

There are basically two ways that I prevent any chance of disaster on such a task (outside of having a full backup that has been tested.)

One is to remove the internal hard drive either power or data cable. (ESD!!)
Be sure your bios has the usb drive shown in hard drive order usually after this.
Then boot to media and load to usb drive.

Since I am pretty lazy I tend to just create a free virtual machine instance and without a virtual hard drive. I attach the usb to the VM and use a linux iso image as my cd source. Then load to usb in the VM.

273 · 07-05-2016, 04:50 PM

I wonder, would a "high capacity drive" be one using shingled recording? If so, I suspect it could be frustrating to try to run an OS from...

jefro · 07-05-2016, 08:22 PM

Ray, you should re-consider placing an email in a public post.