3tb internal hard drives & Win 7 64 bit - update with answers

[tbm]

I need more storage and since the price per gig of HD space is similar between 2tb and 3tb drives, I'd rather go with the latter for a more "future proof" system.

My goal is to have one secondary internal 3tb drive for photos, backed up by a second 3tb drive located externally in a drive dock.

I'm aware of the potential addressing problems of fitting a drive larger than 2.19Tb into some older machines that can only address 32 bits (including my own) however I've read that the drive should be bundled with a PCI express HBA card to allow the drive to properly interface with the machine when used internally.

The two things putting me off at the moment are a) reports of sketchy performance with W7 64 bit and b) the fact that apparently some drive docks support 64 bit addressing (although apparently the one I'm currently using doesn't :razz.

So my questions are; is anyone using a reasonably old machine with W7 64bit and a 3tb drive without any problems, and also is anyone successfully using a drive of this size with a dock, and if so what brand is it?#

I know all this is a pain but my current 2tb photo drive is already over half full and forsaking 3tb drives would mean I'd have to double everything up when the 2tb drives get full.. which I really don't fancy doing.

Ta

 

[neil_g]

whats your motherboard?

if i remember rightly off the top of my head it shouldnt matter as long as its not the OS drive..

 

[tbm]

Thanks for your quick reply - not sure what the motherboard is; I doubt it'll be anything standard though as the machine is a Dell XPS 8000.

IIRC I've read that to run a 2.19TB+ drive as the primary / OS drive you need a motherboard that supports 64bit addressing (UEFI), which mine doesn't. I've also read that you can use is as a secondary drive, providing it's run off an HBA card. WD used to bundle the HBA card, but now that (I suspect) all new machines support 64bit addressing,

I'm not so sure that the card is still included. I've tried contacting Pixmania (currently the cheapest suppliers of the drive) but their customer service line is apparently pretty useless and I couldn't get through..

I've also read thread referring to formatting internal drives as "GBT"; but I'm unsure as to whether this still requires the HBA card.

Still somewhat confused, but will persevere with internetz research when my resolve returns

 

[tbm]

I've spent a few more hours working through this mess this morning and have reached a few more, hopefully reliable conclusions:

It looks like neil_g is correct that a a 2.2TB+ drive can be used as an internal storage drive (secondary) as long as the PC is running a 64 bit OS (Vista or 7):

Windows should automatically recognize all 3TB as long as a 64 bit OS is used (excluding Windows XP64 and Server 2003). If you want to boot from a 3TB drive you must use a 64 bit OS as well as a motherboard that uses an EFI firmware

EDIT: The drive must also be initialized using GPT rather than MBR

Apparently the 64 bit OS' include the facility to manage the drive as GPT:

Right-click My Computer -> Manage -> Storage -> Disk Management -> find disk that you want to convert -> delete all partitions and volumes (you will lose all data on the drive) -> right click on the disk itself (to the left of where the partitions are) -> Convert to GPT Disk

Source

I've also read that some motherboards / chipsets might still present problems, possible solutions being to update their drivers or go with a third party PCI card that will handle the capacity (like the one originally bundled with the WD drive, which I no longer think is the case).

Tbh I know this problem will persist and assuming I don't want to end up with 2Tb drives everywhere in future I need to find a solution.. so I'm thinking of buying a couple of 3Tb drives and just accepting that worst case scenario I'll have to spend another £30ish on a PCI card and perhaps the same again on a new drive dock.

Talking of docks, there don't appear to be a whole lot around at the moment that support 2.2Tb+; and very few list compatibility in their specs. I think that if I stick a 3tb drive in my existing dock it'll show up as two drives - one around 2Tb and the other around 0.8Tb.. so this could work as a stop-gap until my storage requirements exceed 2Tb (should be a while), by which time I suspect most / all docks on the market will be 2.2Tb compliant..

Nowt's ever simple, is it.. :razz:

 

[tbm]

Given the sheer amount of interest this thread has received I thought I'd best keep it updated

I spoke to a learned mate earlier about the external drive dock or enclosure; apparently the dock will only fail to recognise the full size of a 2.2Tb+ drive if connected via usb and it's sata/usb interface only has 32bit implementation.

I'm told that conversely to USB, esata is basically a straight through connection to the controller on the motherboard - meaning that in theory, as long as you're using a 64 bit OS and an esata connection (and not USB), any drive dock should run a 2.2Tb+ drive

Drives and peripherals are ordered.. let's see how badly it all goes wrong

 

[tbm]

So, all the bits arrived and aside from having to remove the PSU to physically get the one drive in, it all went surprisingly splendidly - I now have 5Tb of backed up storage space

The first drive was added as an internal secondary, plugged straight into the last sata connector on the motherboard and was recognised and managed using GPT with no problem. The other internal drive was added externally with my esata connected drive dock, and again was no problem from a recognition or formatting perspective.

So if you have an older W7 64bit machine fitting a 2.2Tb+ drive as a secondary should be plug and play, providing you format and manage it correctly. If you have this spec machine you can also run a 2.2Tb+ drive in a dock, as long as the dock is connected via esata or has a Sata/USB interface that supports 64 bit addressing (it appears that not a lot do atm).

If you have an older W7 32bit machine you'll need a PCI / expansion Sata card to run a 2.2Tb+ drive internally, and a drive dock / enclosure with 64bit addressing capability in it's Sata/USB interface to run the drive externally.

Hope this is of use to someone