Storage Solutions Will my system support a 1.5TB harddrive

woozydevotee

woozydevotee

Disciple
I have the following configuration Amd 3500+ Venice,2.2ghz| FoxconnNF4K8MC | Transcend 1GB 400mhz| Nvidia 6200tc | Cooler master extreme 500w|LG DVD Writer | Seagate barracuda 80gb

i want to install a WD 1.5Tb Hard drive mainly to store movies and games, i am just worried in case the motherboard doesn't support a high capacity hard drive, please advice
 
is the 1.5 tb a external or Sata?

if sata, then it may not support. comp will hang on bios screen.

but if its a external with a separate power supply, you can use it.

power it up (the external power supply ) after the windows loading screen, everything will work.

iam using a 2 tb with a intel 865gbf the same way.

UM
 
its a sata hard drive, i dont understand if an external hardrive can work why cant a sata drive with the same capacity work? how does everyone else use it
 
thanks guys, i just bought a 1.5tb drive and its working fine, just wanted to know something about the jumper settings, should i tinker with it?
 
dont tinker if it works. Just note that you can use drives of any size with your system, but you cannot boot from drives that are greater than 2 Tb in size.
 
axeman said:
dont tinker if it works. Just note that you can use drives of any size with your system, but you cannot boot from drives that are greater than 2 Tb in size.
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Huh? really, and why it should be? is that specific to his configuration? or with all configuration, any way there are no HDD of above 2TB capacity yet.
 
Yeah, i'd like a clarification on that as well, because once the LBA stuff is sorted out in the OS, the next limit is somewhere in the PB's.
 
panther said:
Huh? really, and why it should be? is that specific to his configuration? or with all configuration, any way there are no HDD of above 2TB capacity yet.
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All configs. This is a BIOS limitation as per design.

To boot > 2 Tb drives, you will need a smaller drive with the OS and MBR on that. You can use > 2 Tb drives after loading any OS first.

Else you need a system with a EFI BIOS e.g. Itanium based systems.

As far as HDD, you need to look at it logically, than physically.

If I make a RAID 5 of 4 x 1 TB Drives, OR a RAID 0 of 2 x 1.5 Tb I will get a drive in BIOS exceeding 3 Tb which in our current systems cannot be used for the OS, as BIOS cannot boot from this.

The LBA stuff is just where the primary partition can reside and how large it can be. There used to be a limit at 48 Bits i.e. 128 Gb, but I need to verify this, as I have not faced this issue in a long time. (P2/ P3 Age query :p )
 
So just make a OS partition that is less than 2TB and you're good to go. If you had a 10TB drive this would still apply.

The LBA stuff is just where the primary partition can reside and how large it can be. There used to be a limit at 48 Bits i.e. 128 Gb, but I need to verify this, as I have not faced this issue in a long time. (P2/ P3 Age query )
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No need to. i've got a 750GB HDD on a P3 system working just fine. There would be no probs to attach larger drives if the interface was IDE. OS partition is a tiny 10GB.
 
Ah, i think i got it now. you're saying its not possible (at all) to install an OS on a drive that is bigger than 2TB as the BIOS won't accept it.

Don't you just hate these soft limits :mad:

Wonder how soon this BIOS limitation will be removed ?
 
Reading that link i came across....

In particular, the MBR limits on the number and size of disk partitions (up to 4 partitions per disk, up to 2 TB per partition)
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So its the MBR that limits the HDD size to 2TB as it uses a 32 bit addressing scheme and cannot address higher ie 2^32 × 512 bytes, or 2 TiB, so here its the block size that limits the factor, if you up the block size to 64kb then your limit grows to 2.7TB. In real terms that means a 2.5TB HDD could be supported using MBR at the very max.

Enter the GUID Partition Table (GPT) that does away with this limitation and is a part of EFI and works with Vista & Win 7.

So it is true to say its actually the MBR that imposes this 2TB restriction rather than the BIOS as you alluded to earlier ?

Itanium was the first to support 64-bit addressing in the mid-90s but i'm under the impression any x-64 compliant chip will handle it and will be equipped with a mobo + BIOS that is EFI compatible.
 
Is it possible for even a 32-bit operating system to get around this limitation provided the OS can handle it ? This means no XP but vista or win 7 in 32-bit mode should work with any x-64 compliant CPU.

Or do they have to be run explcitily in 64-bit mode ?

For Intel, it should work in newer versions of Pentium 4, Pentium D, Pentium Extreme Edition, Celeron D, Xeon and Pentium Dual-Core processors, the Atom 230, 330, D510, and N450 and in all versions of the Core 2, Core i7, Core i5 and Core i3 processors.
 
Its actually somewhat odd. The limitation does not apply to Linux, if you use GPT!

No workaround for any MS OS. I am not sure if Win 7 supports GPT wholly, so cant say abt that.
 
axeman said:
Its actually somewhat odd. The limitation does not apply to Linux, if you use GPT!
Click to expand...
Not odd, GPT is a key reqmt to be able to address larger HDDs.

SO the question is which OS's can support it.

axeman said:
No workaround for any MS OS. I am not sure if Win 7 supports GPT wholly, so cant say abt that.
Click to expand...

This table indicates that so long as the processor is x-64 then it should work as it uses a hyrbrid of MBR + GPT.

But i don't run 64bit OS so can't confirm it.
 
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