3TB Internal Hard Drives

[bobbydjr]

Hello,

Presently, I have an HP Pavillion Elite HPE-480t Customized Desktop PC, purchased in November of 2010, with the Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-960 quad-core [3.2GHz, 1MB L2 + 8MB shared L3 cache], 12GB DDR3-1066MHz SDRAM [6 DIMMs], with two 1.5TB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drives, running Windows 7. The primary drive hosts the operating system and all software programs. The secondary drive is used strictly for storage.

I want to replace the secondary 1.5TB drive with the WD Caviar Green 3TB drive, used strictly as storage.

With my setup, is this possible since the WD Caviar Green 3TB hard drive comes with an "Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI)-compliant Host Bus Adapter (HBA), in the form of a PCI Express add-in card"? Will my computer recognize the larger capacity drive, and will it recognize it with its maximum amount of storage?

I tried the Seagate 3TB and it didn't work at all. But with the add-in card from WD, will that make the difference? Or should I scrap this idea altogether and get another external drive, which I really don't want to do? And I don't want to spend the money if it won't work.

[Big_Dave · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Review this article from Western Digital on large capacity hard drives.

Update the Intel storage controller drivers from the Intel web site before installing the new hard drive.  Version 10.6 appears to be the latest.

The Seagate hard drive should have worked unless it was faulty.  Check with Seagate for advice on using the DiscWizard solution.

Some of the newer hard drives use advanced format (AF) technology which might cause some issues in particular situations.  Check with the manufacturers to see if any of the conditions apply to your situation before you install the hard drive.

[bobbydjr]

Thanks, Big Dave. Good information.

I'll give it a try. If successful I'll certainly Accept the Solution. If not, I'll be back with more questions.

[bobbydjr]

Hey Big_Dave.

Sorry it took so long to reply again. Since there are no stores around here that sell the WD 3TB drive, I had to order one. It came in today.

I got it installed and running. It's showing up in My Computer like it should. But it's showing 2.72TB free of 2.72TB. Is that what it should show for a 3TB drive, or is there a way to access the full 3TB's?

Once we get that, I'll certainly click "Accept As Solution".

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Go into Computer Management ---> Disk Management and fully expand the screen.  Look for your new hard drive.  Is the total space 2.72? You shouldn't see any other partitions or unformatted areas.  If this is the case then there are three possibilities:

1. unformatted capacity verses formatted capacity
2. hidden manufacturer's area.
3. If the hard drive is "advanced format" then the 4K sectors might be the issue although it should help.

You might want to read this Western Digital article on "alignment" for advanced format hard drives.

[lasvegaswireman]

The reason why the drive is reported as 2.72TB while the box claims it is a 3TB is do to the way the manufacturers and Windows report the size. The manufactutrers count in decimal (one terabyte (TB) is equal to 1,000,000,000,000 bytes), while Windows counts in binary (one terabyte is equal to 1,099,511,627,776 bytes). 3,000,000,000,000 bytes (dec) / 1,099,511,627,776 bytes (bin) = 2.7284841053187847137451171875 TB = 2.72TB do to rounding.

Please read this Seagate FAQ document for more information on the subject.

Frank

[bobbydjr]

The new drive is showing 2794.39 GB NTFS; Healty (Primary Partition). There are no other partitions or unformatted areas. Looking at the article lasvegaswireman linked to, 2794.39 is slightly better than the 2793 GB for Windows Output. So I take it that's all I'm going to get out of it. Correct? I'd like to know before I start transferring files to it.

[lasvegaswireman]

Yes, that is all you are going to get.

Frank

[bobbydjr]

Very good.

Thank you and kudos to Big_Dave and lasvegaswireman! You both provided excellent information and were a tremendous help to me. You're a credit to this community. Well done!