Internal HDD Size Limitations - Can I Upgrade to a 4tb HDD??

[dthoftne]

I'm new at this forum, so am doing my best.

I just purchased a new Western Digital Black internal 4tb Hdd. I'd asked WD before ordering if it was compatible with my 170t. The answer was yup. Now that I have it installed, my system won't recognize it. My Desktop system is 10 years old and when new, the max size for an hdd was 2tb.  Were there larger hdd's then? When calling HP, they said it won't support a 4tb drive, but I'm thinking he was reading the same "specs" I was when it was new. I'm thinking that even if the drive wasn't compatible with my rig, it would at least recognize it. Before returning this drive, I'm asking if anybody knows for sure if this is truly a size limitation problem, or possibly something else. 

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

A 4 TB drive is not supported as a boot drive in your PC.

In order for drives in excess of 2 TB to be recognized as boot drives, the PC has to have a UEFI BIOS, which your PC does not have.

You may be able to use the drive as a data drive if you format it in GPT.

See this HP whitepaper on this whole subject. 

It was written for business PC's but the information generally applies to any desktop PC.

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02826744