2.0 TB internal hard drives and windows 7

[toyotascionxd]

I'm gonna buy a hard drive next week for my computer. I plan to install windows 7 on my computer would I have problems if I purchase a 2 TB internal hard drive? Is it much better to get a 1.5 TB internal hard drive instead?

 

[Malcolmk]

No you won't have any problems. It's when you go over 2tb that windows has problems. I just upgraded my workstation to a 6.4tb raid 5 but I always partition in 2tb lots to avoid problems. I also have a Hitachi 2tb drive for back ups and it formats to 1.81tb. You will also find there is no real difference in performance between the 2tb and smaller drives.

 

[toyotascionxd]

thanks man.

 

[mindless728]

No you won't have any problems. It's when you go over 2tb that windows has problems. I just upgraded my workstation to a 6.4tb raid 5 but I always partition in 2tb lots to avoid problems. I also have a Hitachi 2tb drive for back ups and it formats to 1.81tb. You will also find there is no real difference in performance between the 2tb and smaller drives.

well as long as you aren't booting from that RAID you could set up a GUID table instead of MBR to allow larger than 2TiB partitions

 

[sminlal]

Windows 7 itself doesn't have any problems with drives over 2TB - it's the BIOS that has the issue - and the issue only exists for boot drives. A drive over 2TB won't give you any problems at all as long as it's not a boot drive. (You'll need to set up the drive using GPT (GUID Partition Table) instead of MBR (Master Boot Record) partitions - but Windows 7 understands those perfectly and the BIOS won't care as long as you don't try to boot from it).

If you want to have a boot drive that's larger than 2GB then you need a BIOS that understands GPT parititons, and you need to use that type of partition on the drive.