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I used Clonezilla to copy an ext4 1.5 terabyte disk to a 4 terabyte disk. But when I try to use Gparted to grow the partition to fill the 4 terabyte, it fails. Repeated trials show it only allows me to fill to half the disk (2 terabytes); otherwise I get an error message saying "see details", although there are none. I suspect that Gparted is operating 32 bit, even though I am running it from a live Ubuntu 64 bit 14.04 media edition DVD. If Gparted included with 64-bit Ubuntu is limited to 2 terabyte due to 32-bit arithmetic, what else can I use to grow the partition? Is there a 64-bit Gparted or equivalent?

David Ecklein
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    MBR partition tables have a 2TB limit. Are you using MBR or GPT? – muru Dec 08 '14 at 12:50
  • It would probably be easier (and arguably safer) to just make more partitions under 2TB each. – Xen2050 Dec 08 '14 at 13:09
  • The situation is a data disk (non-bootable) that is running out of space and has to be replaced with a larger one. It is paired in a RAID array. To Xen2050: increasing the number of partitions is not an option here. To muru: I was not aware of the MBR/GPT tradeoff, so thanks to this forum, gparted is off the hook. I notice that there is a link from @novice about converting MBR to GPT - seems intended for bootable disks, but I will see if it can be interpreted in my context. Additional help welcomed! – David Ecklein Dec 08 '14 at 13:37
  • When it's just about data on a simple EXT4 volume, why don't you just create a GPT partition table on the new drive and a new EXT4 filesystem, then copy all data with sudo rsync -av or sudo cp -a? If Clonzilla does bitwise copying, it will transfer all the data as is, including cruft and fragmentation, where es copying to a new drive will defragment and ensure that optimal settings are chosen during filesystem creation (like alignment). – LiveWireBT Dec 08 '14 at 14:16
  • Thanks, @LiveWireBT - This sounds good to me. Will give it a try. Better than patching up a clonezilla copy having the wrong kind of partition table. The newer OSes out there should be using GPT to begin with. Why not give the installer the choice at least? – David Ecklein Dec 08 '14 at 21:04

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Your filesystem has MBR (Master Boot Record), in MBR maximum partition size is 2TB(tera byte) only, so that's why you are not able to do this.

To make the system capable of this, you need to replace your MBR with GPT (GUID Partition Table). It allows you to create one partition up to 2PB(peta byte). To replace you can read this link : How can I change/convert a Ubuntu MBR drive to a GPT?

For difference between MBR & GPT go to this link or DuckDuckGo.

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