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Large Capacity Drives 2TB+
Large capacity drives greater than 2TB don't work on all Operating Systems
We’re moving into a whole new era of hard drive storage with the latest Hitachi 3-Terabyte 0F12450 hard drive release. Not only is it a huge 3TB size with 64mb of cache, but it’s also the first SATAIII drive we’ve gotten our hands on. Contrary to what you may read out there, 6Gb/s doesn’t automatically make the drive twice as fast as a 3Gb/s drive. That’s all marketing hype talking about the different SATA Specifications, not actual drive speeds. So here’s the actual tested, bench-marked and verified performance we managed to achieve with this drive on both a PC and Mac. Hitachi advertises the drive performance to be about 165 MB/s, with our actual confirmed speeds right at 155 MB/s, read and writes very close to each other. SATAIII (6Gb/s) drives are designed to be backward compatible with SATAII buses and will work if plugged into an older style bus. There are some compatibility issues that we have to contend with regarding older 32-bit operating systems and motherboard BIOS that were not designed for high-capacity drives. Please choose the tab below to find out more regarding compatibility issues with your specific operating system. If you’re not sure please contact us. Drives are the one item that we can’t easily take back once sold due to manufacturers warranty policies. High-capacity drives will not work on all computers. Drive enclosures that have a built in bridge-board (Firewire-USB) or that attach through a host card may have other difficulties with high-capacity drives. Check with your hardware vendor before installing drives larger than 2TB.
The following tabs are a summary of operating system support for high-capacity (greater than 2TB) hard drives. All configurations assume that partitioning is done using GPT partition tables (rather than MBR).
Microsoft XP 32-bit operating systems are not capable of addressing drives larger than 2TB. The 3 TB drive will not work on your computer. Microsoft Vista SP1 or later 32-bit operating systems can not use a drive larger than 2TB as a boot disk. You may be able to use a 2TB and larger drive as a data disk as long as your motherboard can address that size of disk. The motherboard must be equipped with EFI BIOS. Check with the manufacturer of your specific motherboard or the manufacturer of your computer to verify High-Capacity drive support before purchasing this drive. Microsoft Vista SP1 or later, 64-bit operating systems can use larger than 2TB disks as a Boot Drive provided the motherboard is running an EFI BIOS. If the motherboard is not running an EFI BIOS you may only use the high-capacity disk as a data drive. Check with the manufacturer of your specific motherboard or the manufacturer of your computer to verify High-Capacity drive support before purchasing this drive. Windows 7 32-bit operating systems are not capable of using drives larger that 2TB as a Boot Disk. You may be able to use a 2TB and larger drive as a data disk as long as your motherboard can address that size of disk. The motherboard must be equipped with EFI BIOS. Check with the manufacturer of your specific motherboard or the manufacturer of your computer to verify High-Capacity drive support before purchasing this drive. Windows 7 64-bit operating systems may use 2 TB and larger drives as both a Boot Disk and⁄or data disk. If you wish to boot from the disk the motherboard must be equipped with EFI BIOS. EFI BIOS is not required to use a high-capacity disk as a data drive. Check with the manufacturer of your specific motherboard or the manufacturer of your computer to verify High-Capacity drive support before purchasing this drive. Intel-Based Mac OSX 10.6+ is capable of using greater than 2TB hard drives. Simply put, you must be on a MacPro running Snow Leopard. If your motherboard does not have EFI BIOS you can not run this drive. The Generation 5 (G5) and older computers are not capable of using drives larger than 2TB. Linux base operating systems, Ubuntu 8.04+ and SUSE 32 and 64-bit are capable of using larger than 2TB drives as either a boot drive or data drive. The motherboard may need EFI BIOS to be compatible. Check with the manufacturer of your specific motherboard or the manufacturer of your computer to verify High-Capacity drive support before purchasing this drive. Hitachi Deskstar 3TB Hard Drive - Frequently Asked Questions Hitachi Deskstar High-Capacity Drive Technology Brief
Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions you may have. Business hours are 8-5 Monday-Friday Pacific time, 208-983-2555.
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