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Cannot create volumes above 2.2TB on macOS, on a drive with 4k physical and logical sectors, HELP! #1412
Description
I've tried creating hidden volumes using every file system type, but I'm unable to create one above 2.2TB
Expected behavior
Since I am creating on a drive wth 4k local and physical sectors, I'd expect to be able to create much larger volumes, far above 2.2TB.
Observed behavior
I get an error that says I must create a larger volume on a drive with 4k sector size. I am doing exactly that.
Steps to reproduce
- Grab a Mac, format a drive with 4k logical and physical sectors. Apple lets you do this easily. I use a Samsung SDD
- Try to create a 3.5TB hidden volume. You'll get the error.
- That's it, I run the latest OS and version of Veracrypt.
4.HELP!!!
Screenshots
Your Environment
Please tell us more about your environment
VeraCrypt version:
1.25.9
Operating system and version:
macOS Sonoma 14.6.1
System type:
Apple MacBook Air with M2 Processor, 24Gb Ram, 2TB internal drive, 4TB external SSD.
Activity
idrassi commentedon May 27, 2026
Thank you for the report. After reviewing this, I believe this was caused by the same GUI wizard bug later tracked in #1560 and fixed by #1672.
For file-hosted containers, VeraCrypt uses an internal sector size of 512 bytes regardless of the APFS/device block size of the disk where the container file is stored. In older versions, including 1.25.9, the hidden-volume wizard incorrectly applied the FAT 32-bit sector-count limit to file containers, which resulted in an erroneous 2 TiB cap and a misleading message about needing 4096-byte sectors.
This has been fixed in current master by restricting that check to device-hosted volumes only, and the fix is included in the 1.26.28 Beta releases. Please retry with 1.26.28 Beta3 or newer: https://github.com/veracrypt/VeraCrypt/releases/tag/VeraCrypt_1.26.28_Beta3
One note: for a file-hosted outer volume larger than 2 TiB, FAT cannot be used inside the outer volume because the VeraCrypt file container sector size is 512 bytes. Use APFS, exFAT, or Mac OS Extended, and leave sufficient free space/headroom because exact hidden-volume placement can only be calculated for FAT outer volumes.
I will close this as fixed by #1672. If you were using "Select Device" rather than creating a file container, please reopen or create a new issue with the exact selected device path and the full
diskutil infooutput, since that would be a different case.