Advanced format drive

[rplohocky]

Hello, I purchased a 4tb seagate external drive. I wanted to know if their is a hotfix from microsoft to make that hard drive compatible with my windows 7 home premium (64-bit)?

 

[RealBeast]

Are you having issues connecting? AFAIK you should not need to do anything to Windows 7 x64 to use that drive, assuming you have the USB 3 drivers installed to use the USB 3 connector.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/beyond-2tb/

 

[rplohocky]

Are you having issues connecting? AFAIK you should not need to do anything to Windows 7 x64 to use that drive, assuming you have the USB 3 drivers installed to use the USB 3 connector.

My issue is I can't watch any of the movie's I have stored on my seagate 4tb external hard drive. I understand that any drive over 2tb has 512 sector size but drives 3tb's and bigger have 4096 sector size and can't keep up so it freezes about 30 minutes into the movie. I spoke to Western digital and they said any drive larger than 2 tb won't work for movies but I spoke to another guy at Costco, where I bought the 4tb drive, and he said that microsoft may have issued a hotfix for this problem. Are you aware of any way to fix this issue?

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The drive is not the issue. The advanced format drives work quite well for video. Your problems lie elsewhere.

 

[rplohocky]

The drive is not the issue. The advanced format drives work quite well for video. Your problems lie elsewhere.

I understand that the drive works fine but windows 7 has some software issues that will not interact properly with drives that have 4096 sector size. I am looking for the any software updates or patches that will fix my issue.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Never had to install any patches to get Windows 7 to work with advanced format drives. However, all of my machines have SP1 installed.

 

[rplohocky]

Never had to install any patches to get Windows 7 to work with advanced format drives.

I had a 3tb external WD HDD that would stop in the middle of a movie time after time. I tried the drive on 2 computers and in different usb ports. No luck. I called WD and they said drives that are bigger then 2 tb's will not work to view a movie, I can store it on there but if I want to watch it then it will work for 30 minutes and freeze. After reading numerous articles about this problem I have found that before Jan 2011 drives were mainly 512 sector size since then all of them have moved to 4096 and if you look on microsofts web site they describe software issues with larger sector size drives. There is so much crap online about this issue that I don't know which artical to believe.

 

[RealBeast]

I understand that the drive works fine but windows 7 has some software issues that will not interact properly with drives that have 4096 sector size. I am looking for the any software updates or patches that will fix my issue.

While I have not had any issues either, there is a hotfix for advanced drives that I have never felt the need to install HERE. I stream bluray images (20-30Gb) all the time from 3Tb drives with AF and have never had an issue, perhaps luck or perhaps the fact that they are internal drives that I formatted GPT/NTFS on Windows 7?

 

[rplohocky]

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/beyond-2tb/

I am downloading that link now, is that the software/patch I need to be able to watch movies from a 4tb HDD?

 

[rplohocky]

While I have not had any issues either, there is a hotfix for advanced drives that I have never felt the need to install HERE. I stream bluray images (20-30Gb) all the time from 3Tb drives with AF and have never had an issue, perhaps luck or perhaps the fact that they are internal drives that I formatted GPT/NTFS on Windows 7?

I had the same issue with a 3tb WD external drive as I do with my brand new Seagate external drive on 2 different PC's. I have 3 other 2tb externals and they work fine.
Thank you for the link you sent, I downloaded that earlier but it said that I already have that update.

 

[RealBeast]

It sounds like an external drive issue (not a specific drive, but all large drives), as I have used dozens of internal drives on various builds without any issues but rarely use large externals as the transfers are too slow (I use an Icy Dock to hot swap large drives into my main rig to back up bluray images).

Take a look at the drive, attach it and open an elevated command prompt box (right click run as admin) and type fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo <drive letter>: and see if the drive shows 512 bytes per sector and 4096 bytes per physical sector, which I would expect it will.