External ssd HDD usb 3.0 8TB

[truenorth]

It has been about 20 years since I was last on CH.I recently purchased new the above HDD. It does appear in the list in disk management as present. It initially showed a drive letter as E: It showed in excess of 7TB available. I was able to change the drive letter to K;/I was able to change the MBR to GPT. However trying to initialize and format using disk management plus a free disk partitioning app =I cannot do an initialization nor a partition. What I would like to do is =initialize/create  two 500gb partitions/six 6 TB partitions/and the last partition whatever remains. I have tried to accomplish this on two different laptops. One using win8.1 and the other win 11. Oh as well all the partitions except one I want to be Fatex and the one other NTSF. If someone can either tell me how to do this or link a free app that will do it I would be very grateful. Thank you.

[truenorth]

Please excuse my error I should have said "6 1tb partitions" not 6 6tb.

[Allan]

Hi truenorth. Actually, it's only been about 9 years - but why quibble ?

Please describe exactly how you are doing what you are trying to do and where the problem(s) occur.

[Lisa_maree]

Hi Truenorth,

It is unlikely the drive is a 8 tb external SSD. Did you pay $600.00 + for it ?. If not it is likely a fake.

There is plenty of info on the internet how to detect and test for a fake drive.

[DaveLembke]

What jumps out at me is that your exceeding the 4 Partition Limit that unless something changed I thought still was in place of 4 per drive?

You may have to make them as 2 x 500GB partitions and 2 x 3.5TB partitions to make the 8TB and use all space.

If the drive is not accepting creation of any partitions then I'd return it for another as defective. If you created the first 4 and cant create more then its the limit of 4 per drive I believe. I have only ever had 4 per drive and when needing say 8 partitions have 2 drives with 4 partitions per drive. Additionally I also use VHD's for projects but they are slower than direct drive access even with SSD's accessing a VHD drive file. You can have as many VHD's as you have space to create on a drive. But they are only accessible from an OS or Software that supports accessing them. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/storage/disk-management/manage-virtual-hard-disks

More here if this interests you for isolation of data into VHD's. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-and-set-vhdx-or-vhd-windows-10

Also Welcome Back.. I've been here since 2006 and remember you from a ways back