Western Digital launched the industry's first 2 TB hard disk drive back in January of 2009, the 2 TB WD Caviar Green. This was followed up by the Hitachi 7K2000 in August 2009 - the first 2 TB hard disk drive with a spindle speed of 7,200 RPM. Unfortunately, there has been no further progress since then. It was not for a lack of trying though. Every hard disk drive manufacturer in the world has to deal with the problem of the 2.1 TB capacity limit, which was brought about by the LBA addressing limit in 32-bit operating systems. This problem can be solved by switching to 48-bits Long LBA, but this will only work with newer 64-bit operating systems. There was also the issue of updating the GUID Partition Table (GPT) to support Master Boot Record partitions that are larger than 2.1 TB. The good news is that they are close to a solution! Link : ED#121 : Western Digital To Ship 3 TB Hard Disk Drives!
Don't spread FUD. 1. 48bit LBA is supported since SP1 of Windows XP 32bit. 2. Protocol limitation of 28/48bit is NOT equal to 32bit addressing limitation of MBR. 3. 2TB is a limit with 32bit MBR addressing if we use 512B sectors. When true 4KB sector drives come to market we will be able to use MBR addressing up to 2*8=16TB of space (with vista/win7 natively, xp not necessarily). 3. What problem ?? GPT is fully seperate from MBR. 4. Solution to a non-existant problem is good, can be ca$hed off the non-knowing-better people, eh ?
ED#121 : Western Digital To Ship 3 TB Hard Disk Drives! Rev. 2.0 Western Digital launched the industry's first 2 TB hard disk drive back in January of 2009, the 2 TB WD Caviar Green. This was followed up by the Hitachi 7K2000 in August 2009 - the first 2 TB hard disk drive with a spindle speed of 7,200 RPM. Unfortunately, there has been no further progress since then. It was not for a lack of trying though. Every hard disk drive manufacturer in the world has to deal with the problem of the 2.1 TB capacity limit, which was brought about by the LBA addressing limit in 32-bit operating systems. This problem can be solved by switching to 48-bits Long LBA, but this will only work with newer 64-bit operating systems. There was also the issue of updating the GUID Partition Table (GPT) to support Master Boot Record partitions that are larger than 2.1 TB. The good news is that Western Digital just launched both a 2.5 TB as well as a 3 TB hard disk drive! Take a look at the full details, especially how they did it! Link : ED#121 : Western Digital To Ship 3 TB Hard Disk Drives! Rev. 2.0
Slightly wrong on the boot drive. You can use boot drive on Vista/Win 7 64-bit and some other OSs. Large capacity drives
ED#121 : Western Digital To Ship 3 TB Hard Disk Drives! Rev. 2.1 Western Digital launched the industry's first 2 TB hard disk drive back in January of 2009, the 2 TB WD Caviar Green. This was followed up by the Hitachi 7K2000 in August 2009 - the first 2 TB hard disk drive with a spindle speed of 7,200 RPM. Unfortunately, there has been no further progress since then. It was not for a lack of trying though. Every hard disk drive manufacturer in the world has to deal with the problem of the 2.1 TB capacity limit, which was brought about by the LBA addressing limit in 32-bit operating systems. This problem can be solved by switching to 48-bits Long LBA, but this will only work with newer 64-bit operating systems. There was also the issue of updating the GUID Partition Table (GPT) to support Master Boot Record partitions that are larger than 2.1 TB. The good news is that Western Digital just launched both a 2.5 TB as well as a 3 TB hard disk drive! Take a look at the full details, especially how they did it! We just updated the article with a correction on the boot drive support. Link : ED#121 : Western Digital To Ship 3 TB Hard Disk Drives! Rev. 2.1
