Hi everyone,
Pictures included ....

NEVER MIND - PROBLEM SOLVED - PAGE 2, MY FINAL POST

I recently purchased a new 4TB Samsung Evo 2.5" Solid State Drive. My current setup is a 2TB SSD Drive, using MBR with 4 Partitions. One for System, one for Data, one for Data Backups, and finally one for a Swap File. I have tried repeatedly to have the 4TB Drive partitioned and formatted but I just seem to run into nothing but problems. Eventually I managed to install GPT on it but wasn't able to go any further while using Gparted. Then I tried (after disconnecting/rebooting) using Gnome Disks in order to create the partitions. This actually worked to a degree i.e. creating the partitions which ended up as being unknown, so not usable.

Alright, so I go back to Gparted (after disconnecting/rebooting) to see if I might be able to format those non-working unknown partitions into ext4. Like I said the partitions with the proper sizes exist, they just appear to be unknown and so I can't use them. Tried formatting one of the larger partitions to ext4 and waited over 2 hours. The nice thing about Gparted is the fact that you can open up the working processes in order to see what's being done or where a problem is being encountered.

When you look at the images you'll see that the 4TB SSD drive has been recognized and that it contains 4 partitions. The partitions all have the correct size. The second and third image display the problems that I'm running into. There appears to be an issue with 64bit filesystem support not being enabled.
I don't understand how this can be?
To my knowledge the latest MX Linux Kernels all provide that support automatically?
So now I'm at a total loss as to what I should or can do to get those partitions to work?

I'm using an Intel NUC with a quad core processor, 8 threads, 32 GB RAM, and HD 655 graphics. My hardware is not the problem ... just my limited knowledge of properly partitioning that 4TB drive.
Using the console is not an issue, just not my first preferred choice.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

.

EDIT: Tried to submit 3 images from gparted, sizes all under 256 kb, but received message that invalid post was being submitted. Huh? I'm using the same system that I've been using for the past 2 years with all of the same hardware and same web browsers. I don't have a clue what's going on? I'm using VPN but that's always been the case for me and the selected VPN location is also the same as always before.

Let's try an image again ....

Nope, nogo on that. Normally I'm using LAN access but since I'm on vacation I'm forced to use a wireless connection. Here's the message that I receive when I try to upload images:
Invalid Post specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator

1. GPT is required for your 4 TB SSD to work properly.
2. You give less information about your hardware. Does it detect your 4 TB SSD correctly?

Yes, the 4TB drive is being detected properly. I don't understand how gparted can detect it if the system won't detect it? It was initially built into the system where it was detected in the UEFI bios. But I had to remove it to work with it as an external drive since I would not have had a machine at all if I hadn't installed the original 2TB back into it. The drive has GPT on it, but there seems to be a "64bit file system not enabled" issue with GPT on that drive. Is it possible that MX Linux 21 doesn't have the kernel set up with 64bit GPT support? Hard to imagine ....

EDIT: Tried to include the images again, this time with VPN disabled, but received the following error:
LinWinux, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:
Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone
else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

This is just nuts ....

Just looks like a feature in that version of gparted? You can post the output of fdisk for the drive or any command line utility of your choice. Have you tried formatting from the command line?

https://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/inde...topic=152714.0

The problem appears to be with GPT since that's the error that I'm getting. I generate the GPT without a problem. There's nothing to format until the partitions are created. So I go ahead and create the desired partitions. That's where the problem seems to be, because when I try to format one of the partitions I receive (after a couple of hours) the error that has to do directly with GPT. My system and all running partitions are 64bit. Yet the error that I receive after attemtping to format is this:

There appears to be an issue with 64bit filesystem support not being enabled

I don't even understand how that is possible and I don't know anything about GPT or MBR aside from the fact that they're being used. Tomorrow I'll try to work with that 4TB drive one more time from scratch, starting by creating a new partition table.

You failed to answer the question. Have you tried formatting a partition from the command line?

No, not yet. Sorry ....

Today I started over from scratch with the terminal. I created a new GPT partition table which was no problem at all. Then I attempted to create & format partitions which was way more complicated than I had thought it would be. I had help files open in the browser, to help guide me with the usage of <Parted> but some of the things in the apparently outdated manual, when compared to the queries which appeared in front of me in the terminal, simply did not jive. I had no idea how to use GB sizes which was also not being explained. The terminal also didn't provide me with start/end points for the entire drive, so I was more or less guessing/hoping that entered numbers resulted in my expectations.

A couple of items worked, then the confusion started with ... Logical?
To me a Questionmark means that an answer is expected. Y / Yes / N / No none of these four resulted in anything but a duplication of that line.
Tapping the enter key appeared to be accepted ... but at that point I began to be uncertain of anything else since this began confusing me.

So I exited the process and removed the (now external) 4TB drive from my MX Linux system.
This is my main system, so if I can't get it running internally on my NUC, then I have no choice but to connect it as an external drive instead.
This should not matter though, because as long as the proper drive (sudo parted /dev/sdb) is being utilized, everything should work as expected.

Plugged the drive back in after the reboot and created a new gpt partition table.
No problem, all's well.

Then I exited parted and started using Gparted on the desktop since I'm much more familiar & comfortable with that.
Gparted recognized the 4TB drive as GPT without a problem.
The partitions which were previously created with parted also showed up.
So now it was time yet once again to see if a partition could be formatted for usage.

As explained yesterday, there appears to be some (to me) mystical 64bit error.
I can't even remember the last time that I used anything 32bit. It's certainly been some years ....

Anyway, here's the output of Gparted which I saved and then edited in English language:
(what's relevant is near the bottom, having to do with the 64bit error)

The bottom line at this point is that the drive is being recognized for what it is and that generating a GPT partition table appears to work. Beyond that the problems begin. Partitions can be created but appear to be faulty since it is not possible to format those partitions due to the 64bit error. I'm beginning to think that the problem has to do specifically with MX Linux since that's what I have installed on all of my machines. I don't see how else this 64bit error could occur ... ???

My Desire for the 4TB SSD in order is this:

200 GB User/System (boot)
1.63 TB Main Partition
1.64 TB Backup Partition
64 GB SWAP Partition

I believe the problem is what command options gparted uses to format the filesystem and not the partitioning process. Just try it from the command line using the default options i.e.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

I will try that next, sometime later today. I just figured that it would be most convenient to begin the process once with all required partitions finished as soon as the work with parted is done. But yeah, I'll try that and see what happens. Thanks.

The problem that I'm encountering is that once I create the gpt partition table I can't just (as far as I know) go ahead and work with that. When I try the command ... mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 ... there is no sdb1 because the disk is still in the state of having received a partition table. So when I try to create an sdb1 partition I'm being asked where to start and where to end. The starting point of 0.0 is no problem, but even though the drive shows up in fdisk -f
Like this: Disk /dev/sdb: 3,73 TiB, 4096805658624 Bytes, 8001573552 Sectors

It won't allow me to end the creation of sdb1 with 409680560000 which is less than actual (since I'm not utilizing 58624 bytes).
The error message that I receive states: Error: The location 4096805650000 is outside of the device /dev/sdb.
How can this be? So once again I'm lost ....

If you cared to read the man page for mkfs.ext4 you would've found out that

-O feature[,...]
The filesystem feature set is comprised of a list of features, separated by commas, that are to be enabled. To disable a feature, simply prefix the feature name with a caret ('^') character.

mkfs.ext4 did exactly exactly what it was asked to do - disabled the 64-bit feature, and filesystem was created without 64bit support, but successfully. So not only gparted passes incorrect arguments to mkfs, it is also unable to interpret the results. Don't use it. Ever. Use proper commandline tools - gdisk and mkfs.ext4.

Thank you. It's still confusing though that the gpt table was created utilizing the command line tool which is the thing that got me thinking that everything was automatically enabled as it should be. The error doesn't specify the partition itself, at least not to me. This still doesn't answer what the heck I'm supposed to be using in order to enter the correct command for meeting my personal needs. The man pages and built-in help can sometimes be confusing all by themselves. So reading something without seeing the specific examples doesn't always help. Case in point, this page here:

https://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html

I don't consider myself to be an idiot but when someone has 30+ years of "point n click" experience, even some of the (to you) simpler things don't appear as simple to others. According that the parted manual I should have had no problem at all getting that 4TB drive configured as I wanted it to be .... yet here we are.
It's my pet peeve with Linux gurus who always think that as soon as you read something about which you know nothing, suddenly the wisdom & understanding of the world will be inherited and everything will be trouble as well as error-free from that point on.
It just doesn't work that way though.

I would really appreciate it if someone could walk me through the command steps one by one in order to mark this post as solved and at the same time potentially cause this to be the solution to anyone else who has a 4TB or larger disk which is giving him/her problems being configured properly. Thank you.
PEACE.

1. Create a partition table if necessary or desired
2. Create partitions as desired.
3. Assign a partition type as necessary
3. Format partitions as desired.

How to perform those steps depends on the utility. gparted is nice because it is a GUI tool and does all the behind the scene work for you. parted is nice but I think that using fdisk or gdisk may be a little easier for just creating the partitions.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GPT_fdisk

Assuming the disk does not have any partitions created you can use the default starting sector and just specify its size. Following the steps in the wiki once the partitions are created write changes to disk and exit.

Use mkfs to format the filesystems as desired. Use mkswap to "format" the swap partition.