With regards to setting up disks, I just use fdisk on the command line.

Good to know that you have had good experiences with generic 128GB pendrives, as I have just ordered 3x to try out with/on my thin client desktops.

1. Seagate 2TB portable
   (this is formatted using standard Linux utilities to (so-called) FAT64 (HPFS/NTFS/exFAT: max 2TB))

2. WD (Western Digital) 4TB portable ("My Passport")
   (this is native M$ format ("Microsoft basic data") and I cannot find a linux utility that can format and/or repair it to it's current state)

The advantage of the former is that it is ubiquitous across many different OS. As an example, my ancient Samsung TV can read & play movies from (1), but not (2).

The advantage of (2) is that it can store above the 2TB threshold. Also, astonishing that I may need it to. I left the disk in it's supplied format since that can be read by more OS than a native Linux format.

As long as you have a 64-bit cpu then (as I understand it) either disk can be read up to the max of the cpu (which I cannot recall as I sit here, but much, much more than 4TB).

So far I found no problem with generic 128 gb drives - but wondered what is the maximum capacity (256gb, 512gb)?

On a related note - other that GPARTED or GNOME Disk Manager... any suggestions on any other software that just format USB?

Thanks in advance.
James
Indiana