3TB issues?

[MIDIman]

What's the deal with 3TB drives? I'm seeing lots of random things about how to properly install these drives because of a 2TB limit, but nothing very conclusive (or not written by a 12 year old).

My issue is a bit more complicated probably.

I bought an Seagate 3TB external (it was $30 cheaper than the internal one). I'm going to use it to move from an old system to a new build. The old system is Core2 Duo based, no UEFI BIOS. Win7 x64. I was planning on removing the drive from its external cage, copying a bunch of data from this system to the 3TB drive via sata, and then moving that drive, still internal, to my new Ivy Bridge rig, which does have a UEFI BIOS.

Any thoughts?

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's not going to work, unless you can live with the drive being partitioned as only a 2TB MBR drive.

 

[taltamir]

I Think you should get an SSD for boot drive and then use the 3TB HDD as a storage drive.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Without UEFI BIOS so it can be installed as a bootable GPT partition you are locked at 2TB.

 

[MIDIman]

The drive is secondary. I don't need to boot from it.

 

[sm625]

I'm just going to avoid 3TB drives until 2017 lol.

 

[Anteaus]

Regardless of whether its a data or boot drive, you must use GPT in order to use the whole 3TB. In order to boot with it, you require a UEFI in addition to GPT. You do not require a UEFI to use the whole 3TB as a data drive, only GPT.

If it's a 3TB external, it should already be setup with GPT. As long as your coming from a Win7-64 system to another Win7-64 system you should be ok.

 

[Anteaus]

I'm just going to avoid 3TB drives until 2017 lol.

Nothing wrong with them. I have 2 of them and they are fine. The early 3TB WD drives had firmware issues in 2010-early 2011 but problems are gone. Also, I think many who had problems are those with XP systems who don't understand the technical differences between the new Advanced Format Drives and last gen.

To the OP, I would recommend getting another drive for backup though. Not because the 3TB are necessary more risky but because losing that much data from any drive failure at one time hurts like hell.

 

[Topweasel]

Regardless of whether its a data or boot drive, you must use GPT in order to use the whole 3TB. In order to boot with it, you require a UEFI in addition to GPT. You do not require a UEFI to use the whole 3TB as a data drive, only GPT.

If it's a 3TB external, it should already be setup with GPT. As long as your coming from a Win7-64 system to another Win7-64 system you should be ok.

I had a 3TB drive external that they pre formatted for MBR and 2TB with the other 1TB waiting for me to create a partition (which I then converted it to GPT and went full 3TB). So YMMV.

 

[taltamir]

Regardless of whether its a data or boot drive, you must use GPT in order to use the whole 3TB. In order to boot with it, you require a UEFI in addition to GPT. You do not require a UEFI to use the whole 3TB as a data drive, only GPT.

If it's a 3TB external, it should already be setup with GPT. As long as your coming from a Win7-64 system to another Win7-64 system you should be ok.

GPT is vastly superior to MBR so its not like this is a bad thing

 

[Anteaus]

I had a 3TB drive external that they pre formatted for MBR and 2TB with the other 1TB waiting for me to create a partition (which I then converted it to GPT and went full 3TB). So YMMV.

Good point. My 3TB came in a single GPT partition.

 

[MIDIman]

To the OP, I would recommend getting another drive for backup though. Not because the 3TB are necessary more risky but because losing that much data from any drive failure at one time hurts like hell.

This is a really good point. I do have a backup NAS that I was planning on selling, but now considering holding onto it and just continuing to backup.

Quite frankly, out of all the HDs I've owned over the past 15 years, only one has died (a 250GB in the late 90's) - and I've owned ALOT of drives. Here I am selling a bunch of the excess drives to conglomerate them all onto a single drive in a newer, smaller system, but it does make sense to always have a backup of anything that "hurts" when its lost.

 

[RampantAndroid]

GPT is vastly superior to MBR so its not like this is a bad thing

Agreed - GPT is always better, going forwards. I just swapped to booting a GPT SSD myself.

 

[taltamir]

Agreed - GPT is always better, going forwards. I just swapped to booting a GPT SSD myself.

I am told that you must have UEFI to boot GPT disk... so I am stuck with MBR until I upgrade my mobo

 

[RampantAndroid]

I am told that you must have UEFI to boot GPT disk... so I am stuck with MBR until I upgrade my mobo

I'm not totally sure about this. I've read otherwise, but don't know enough to comment. But I did say "going forward" - in the sense that, if you build a new system, you should go with GPT.

 

[mv2devnull]

I'm not totally sure about this. I've read otherwise, but don't know enough to comment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table#Unix-class_operating_systems

BIOS loads a bootloader from first sector (aka MBR). Based on the wikipedia text one apparently can have a bootloader code in the first sector of GPT drive such that it can read the rest of itself from a GPT partition.

I have an SSD. Windows boots with UEFI, i.e. Windows bootmanager code is on the special/hidden GPT system partition. However, I do have Linux installed too, on another GPT partition. The bootloader (GRUB) of that Linux distro had no EFI/GPT-support. Somehow, I got some GPT-aware GRUB installed though. It does not have binary in the special GPT partition, so it must be loaded "the BIOS way".

Summary: I have a GPT disk and UEFI. I dual boot by selecting from UEFI menu either EFI Windows boot or a "legacy BIOS" drive. The latter loads GRUB and hence Linux. While this does not proof GPT-boot without EFI, it does hint to that direction.