Dell PC internal drive size limit does it apply to external drives ?

LCPete

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Does anyone know if the 2TB internal drive size limit on older motherboards also applies to external drives?
My PC is a Dell XPS 8300 i7 3.4 gHz that’s limited by the motherboard to 2TB for internal drive, if I fit a larger drive it doesn’t recognise more than 2TB
That’s fine I can live with that as I work from external drives anyway
On the SSD are mainly programs and the operating system
I’ve been using external desktop drives rather than portable ones as I believe that they are more reliable though I may be wrong there
Desktop drives are now mainly available in 4 TB or more now if I buy one does anyone know if I’ll be able to access the full capacity of the external drive ?
 
broc said:
Take a look at this link, you should be able to fix the internal drive capacity with drivers;

www.dell.com

XPS 8300 incorrectly recognises 4TB hard drive as 1.6TB | DELL Technologies

Hi there Just bought a seagate 4TB hard drive and it's connected to the motherboard via SATA. My intention is just for storage ie not to boot windows from it. Using disk management I formatte...
www.dell.com www.dell.com
Click to expand...
Thanks unfortunately the link doesn’t work for me but I’ll have a look on google later
I didn’t want to mess about with the motherboard settings though as I don’t really know what I’m doing
In the longer term I’ll need to get a newer PC , I may just buy the 4TB desktop external drive and see what happens
 
I have a Dell Optiplex 5050 and have a WD desktop 4tb drive connected via usb3 and it works fine.
 
Any limit on an external drive's size depends mainly on the file system under which it has been formatted and the operating system with which you wish to access it. More details than you probably want are shown here: https://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm
 
Last edited:
AndrewFlannigan said:
Any limit on an external drive's size depends mainly on the file system under which it has been formatted and the operating system with which you wish to access it. More details than you probably want are shown here: https://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm
Click to expand...
Thanks does look like I won’t have any issues
I’ve been using 1 and 2 TB drives for a while now and they have been fine
I normally transfer the raws from sd card to the external drive and work from there
Have changed camera (R5) and also using DXO so am quickly running out of disk space
Will eventually need to upgrade PC but my old Dell does still cope OK
 
I've got an old Dell XPS i5 and it's happy with an external 6TB and 2x4TB's in a dual dock. :)
 
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