WD Elements with 4TB MBR Partition

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
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I have been buying 4TB WD Elements drives for years. These drives always had a 4TB MBR partition and worked great with Windows XP. It was my understanding that the USB board in these drives did emulation for the 2TB+ MBR partition support. Windows identifies these drives as model 107C.

I just bought a new 4TB Elements and noticed Windows identified it as model 25A3. The new 4TB Elements drives are now GPT instead of MBR.

Can anyone tell me if WD removed the USB emulation that was in the 107C that allowed these 4TB to work under Windows XP? Is there anyway I can create a 4TB MBR partition, like the older 4TB Elements drives?

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Pretty sure they have removed it.

A lot of info here as to the benefits of GPT and Advanced Format / 4K sectors. And reasons why hard drive manufacturers have transitioned to it.

There is no way to format a (non 512B sector emultated) 4TB HDD to MBR … to the best of my knowledge.

Sorry, technology moves forward … time to upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7/8/10 (or if you’re kean on XP … then Windows XP 64-Bit Edition does support GPT)

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So my question is, how can I check to see if a drive has this 512 emulation thing before buying it. I don’t want to make the mistake of buying one that isn’t. On Amazon.com that detail is nowhere to be found.

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I’ve never seen any drive specs mentioning 512 emulation … but, when it lists under “Operating System” in specs … if it says Windows XP Compatible, that using indicates that it has.

But, you won’t find any “New” hard drives with 512 emulation as Windows XP is no longer supported.

If you are looking for a 3TB or 4TB that’s fully compatible with Windows XP (via 512 Byte Emuation) you’ll have to look for hard drives manufactured before 2014 before Windows XP support was discontinued.

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Only here they show those specs Internal Drive Advanced Format 4k Sector Size Support and Information

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I bought a WD Elements 4TB External HDD about 4~5 years ago … 4TB MBR Parttitioned, works fine with Windows XP

WD Datalife Diagnostics reports it as a WD Element 107C

Crystalmark Disk Info reports the disk inside the enclosure as a WDC WD40EZRX-00SPEB0 4000.7GB

Windows Computer Managament … 4TB MBR Partitioned

mbr
mbr998Ă—681 142 KB

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I bought an WD Elements 4TB external this week 25A3 (February 2019!) and if comes with NTFS MBR!

I did a clone that f*** the whole partition (and became RAW for the OS, showed up 2 partitions on MiniTool Partition Wizard and ONE partition on EaseUS Partition Master!)

I had to RESET it to factory format with the WD Quick Formatter TOOL: How to Format an External Drive Using WD Quick Formatter

SEE: windows 8.1 - How can a MBR formatted hard drive exceed 1.81 TiB capacity? - Super User

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Anyone know why my passport ultra won’t sync my files on mycloud mirror gen 2. I read somewhere the ultra has become incapable of anymore syncing. It used to sync my files to my already previous copies and backed up files. I do not need to copy anymore I just wanna sync from a compatibile external wd drive to my mirror. Anyone know which wd external drives will be able to sync from dashboard of my mycloud mirror ? Rather than copy