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  1. Member
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    Hi i am looking to upgrade a hard drive of mine from 1.5tb to something bigger like 2.5tb or 3tb. I'M wondering if my computer will support anything higher than 2tb? I'm running 1.5tb and two 2tb hard drives right now. I don't want to waste money if my computer won't support higher than 2tb. If my computer does support higher than 2tb what will i need to get one to work? My motherbored is
    Intel DQ965GFKR S775 mATX Motherbored
    Heres my computer specs
    Windows 7 Home Premium 32bit
    1.80ghz duo core
    250gb,1.5,2tb,2tb
    1gb ram

    If you guys need more information on my questions let me know.
    Last edited by Wizard23; 24th Dec 2013 at 21:16.
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    Anything bigger than a 2 TB hard drive on that motherboard won't work if it is going to have the boot drive on it.Maybe as a secondary drive.The physical clusters on say a 3 TB drive are bigger than on a 2TB drive and BIOS won't recognize them for boot up.YOU need a newer mother board that supports UEFI for that.
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    Originally Posted by isapc View Post
    Anything bigger than a 2 TB hard drive on that motherboard won't work if it is going to have the boot drive on it.Maybe as a secondary drive.The physical clusters on say a 3 TB drive are bigger than on a 2TB drive and BIOS won't recognize them for boot up.YOU need a newer mother board that supports UEFI for that.
    The OP would also need to upgrade to a 64-bit version of Windows 7/8/8.1 to use a drive larger than 2TB as a boot drive.
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    I would be using the hard drive as a regular drive not boot. Sorry forgot to put that in the post. Would the 3tb work in a enclosure with my windows 7 32bit?
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    To use for storage only, you can either create more than one partition using MBR (none larger than 2TB), or create a single partition using GPT and not MBR.
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    Forgot to ask since i have no issues running 2tb on my 2007 desktop. Will I have any issues running 3tb on it? Using GPT?
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    Originally Posted by Wizard23 View Post
    Forgot to ask since i have no issues running 2tb on my 2007 desktop. Will I have any issues running 3tb on it? Using GPT?
    You should not have issues using the drive with a computer running Windows 7/8/8.1 or Vista SP2.

    However Windows XP computers, stand alone media players, or TVs and Blu-Ray players with a built-in media player, as well as most other devices that can use a hard drive can't use GPT formatted drives.
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    Thanks everyone with all there help. Ill be ordering a 3tb to replace a failing 1.5tb hard drive ill come back if i need any help or have issues witch I hope i don't want.

    Merry Christendom everyone.
    Last edited by Wizard23; 25th Dec 2013 at 12:09.
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  9. Originally Posted by Wizard23 View Post
    I would be using the hard drive as a regular drive not boot. Sorry forgot to put that in the post. Would the 3tb work in a enclosure with my windows 7 32bit?
    If you're referring to an external USB enclosure then yes, it should work. Assuming the USB enclosure came with the drive or supports drives larger than 2TB. The USB/SATA conversion seems to eliminate some of the capacity problems. I have a 3TB USB3 drive connected to this PC and even Windows XP can see the whole drive and use all the available space. I haven't been game enough to try formatting it with XP, but I didn't need to as the drive was formatted when I bought it.

    I tried connecting the 3TB drive to the media player in my TV a while ago. It supports 2TB drives but refused to acknowledge the 3TB drive's existence. The Sony Bluray player sees the drive but complains it doesn't know what it is. I'd wonder if that's just a limitation due to those devices never having been taught how to converse with hard drives larger than 2TB, and not a file system problem as such. Wouldn't the electronics in the USB enclosure do all the disc reading stuff, which it then converts to USB-speak for conversing with a connected device? I really have no idea how that works, but in theory it makes sense.
    I vaguely remember reading that GPT discs still contain a "legacy" MBR. Maybe that's why XP can play with a 3TB USB3 drive, although that probably doesn't explain why XP can see all of it.
    Last edited by hello_hello; 25th Dec 2013 at 17:10.
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    Thanks for the information. The enclosure i have supports up to 3tb I haven't figure out if im going to put the 3tb in the usb enclosure or not. Right now a small 320gb hard drive is in it for now. I may put the 3tb in the old 1.5tb spot where my old l drive is sitting im replacing due to failing. This is the enclosure I have http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042.
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    Originally Posted by hello_hello View Post
    Originally Posted by Wizard23 View Post
    I would be using the hard drive as a regular drive not boot. Sorry forgot to put that in the post. Would the 3tb work in a enclosure with my windows 7 32bit?
    If you're referring to an external USB enclosure then yes, it should work. Assuming the USB enclosure came with the drive or supports drives larger than 2TB. The USB/SATA conversion seems to eliminate some of the capacity problems. I have a 3TB USB3 drive connected to this PC and even Windows XP can see the whole drive and use all the available space. I haven't been game enough to try formatting it with XP, but I didn't need to as the drive was formatted when I bought it.

    I tried connecting the 3TB drive to the media player in my TV a while ago. It supports 2TB drives but refused to acknowledge the 3TB drive's existence. The Sony Bluray player sees the drive but complains it doesn't know what it is. I'd wonder if that's just a limitation due to those devices never having been taught how to converse with hard drivews larger than 2TB, and not a file system problem as such. Wouldn't the electronics in the USB enclosure do all the disc reading stuff, which it then converts to USB-speak for conversing with a connected device? I really have no idea how that works, but in theory it makes sense.
    I vaguely remember reading that GPT discs still contain a "legacy" MBR. Maybe that's why XP can play with a 3TB USB3 drive, although that probably doesn't explain why XP can see all of it.
    Microsoft is pretty clear that Windows XP doesn't have built-in support for internal hard drives with a partition larger than 2.2TB. Special drivers and the controller in the enclosure are likely what is allowing XP to use a larger external drive.

    For something like a Blu-Ray player or media player, there can be both an HDD size limitation and a drive formatting issues (some older media playing devices require FAT32 formatting and don't work with NTFS or GPT), but if a hard drive has a single partition larger than 2.2TB, GPT is the only option Windows allows for formatting.

    [Edit]Windows XP x64 Edition can use GPT disks for data, but not for booting.
    Last edited by usually_quiet; 25th Dec 2013 at 16:18. Reason: Add more info.
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    Originally Posted by Wizard23 View Post
    Thanks for the information. The enclosure i have supports up to 3tb I haven't figure out if im going to put the 3tb in the usb enclosure or not. Right now a small 320gb hard drive is in it for now. I may put the 3tb in the old 1.5tb spot where my old l drive is sitting im replacing due to failing. This is the enclosure I have http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817173042.
    I have the same enclosure in silver. I use its e-SATA connection with my PC because it is faster than USB 2.0.
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    You can find all info on this page:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463525.aspx


    Cheers
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  14. Originally Posted by usually_quiet View Post
    Microsoft is pretty clear that Windows XP doesn't have built-in support for internal hard drives with a partition larger than 2.2TB. Special drivers and the controller in the enclosure are likely what is allowing XP to use a larger external drive.
    That's pretty much what I was getting at.
    An analogy might be networking a Win98 PC to a WinXP (or newer) PC. The latter probably has a hard drive which is formatted as NTFS, and Win98 can't read NTFS drives, but if I remember correctly it'd still access them over a network because the second PC was "serving up the files" or doing the translating, or however you might describe it.
    Maybe the USB connection does something similar. ie it "serves up the files" and lets XP read and write to the drive because the limitation only applies when XP is accessing the drive "directly".
    I'm theorising a little, and maybe I should investigate how it works a bit more, but it makes sense if there was a way to get their 3TB drives to play nice with XP, WD would implement it.
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