Partitioning and formatting a 4k-emulated (512e) HDD

I just plugged into USB A 3.0 / C 3.1 my new external HDD to Debian Buster system. The disk was sold as **LaCie 2.5" Porsche Design P'9227 2TB USB-C**. Here is the output of fdisk -l /dev/sdc: Disk /dev/sdc: 1.8 TiB, 2000398934016 bytes, 3907029168 sectors Disk model: P9227 Slim Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 33553920 bytes I just read some articles about 4k-emulated drives (*512e*), this one should be the case. I am confused as to how to format it with NTFS. I tried to use my brain, and here is what I came with: - Start sector of the partition should probably start on 4096 sector (?) So I created a partition with gdisk like this: Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sdc1 4096 3907029134 3907025039 1.8T Microsoft basic data - Sector size should probably be forced with the --sector-size option like I did (?) issuing: mkfs.ntfs --no-indexing --verbose --with-uuid --label EXTERNAL_2TB --quick --sector-size 4096 /dev/sdc1 ---------------------- **EDIT1:** Windows 10 fully updated did not recognize the partition and asked me to format, I used my favorite tool for that, and back to Linux here is the output of fdisk -l /dev/sdc: Device Start End Sectors Size Type /dev/sdc1 2048 3907028991 3907026944 1,8T Microsoft basic data So why it must start at sector 2048, I don't understand. --------------------- **EDIT2:** I don't understand what I am doing wrong in terms of compatibility with Windows. Every time I re-partition it / re-format it and boot Windows and plug the drive in, it just offers me to Format it itself. I am quite positive I tried everything from inside gdisk + mkfs.ntfs. I would like to know why I am unable to do the same as Windows does from my Linux CLI. -------------- I will answer all questions tomorrow morning as well as comments. I am now running: pv --progress --timer --eta --rate --average-rate --bytes -s 1953314876k /media/vlastimil/LACIE_2TB/zero with an expected speed of 123 MiB/s.