3T external/portable HDD, 32 bit OS - gpt vs mbr

vlad03 · Jul 27, 2016

I am willing to buy a WD Elements Portable, 3TB, 2.5".
My concern is that the laptop I have now is very old (Asus x59sr) and I have Win 7 on 32 bit.
I know that hard drives larger than 2T don't work on MBR. I will make 2 partitions, in case that matters.
So, if I format it as GPT, will it work on my system?

Thanks.

boosted1g · Jul 27, 2016

You can easily use a 3tb or larger drive formatted to GPT as a secondary drive for even 32bit windows 7 systems.
The problem is only if you wish to boot from it.

photonboy · Jul 27, 2016

boosted1g :

Yep.
It's also shown HERE (Table 4): https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/kb/2581408

Note that W7 32-bit works up to 2TB for MBR, but has full capacity for GPT for non-OS drives.

SuperSoph_WD · Jul 28, 2016

Hey there, @vlad03!

@boosted1g & @photonboy are right! You shouldn't encounter any issues with an external WD Elements portable HDD.
You should still be able to initialize the external with the GPT partition table in Disk Management, and then format it . How you partition the HDD is entirely up to you and your order of things.

If you encounter any issues, let us know!
SuperSoph_WD

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3T external/portable HDD, 32 bit OS - gpt vs mbr

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