6TB HDD Support

Hello guys,

It's been quite some time since I've last posted with some technical problems. Generally I can fix them, but this time I'm requesting information.

I'm looking to upgrade my HDDs.
I have..
1x 500TB
1x 640GB
2x 1TB
1x 160GB

I want to replace the 500GB & 640GB, eventually the 1TB drives with 3TB Drives.

Here's my question:

Since 6TB Drives (6TB Drive - NewEgg) are so new, are there ANY Hardware specs that I need to look for? I had issues with a 4TB Drive, and Windows was splitting the drive into 2 drives, when it was only 1. But that was a Mobo related issue.

Thanks in advance!

CKWD said:

Hey DreadStarX!

As any hardware the 6 TB hard drives have technical support, for any assistance you could always contact the certain manufacturer, in this case WD:
WD Support

These drives are not with any more different specs than other hard drives. Though, here, saying that the more space there is, the more it's filled, the more it should be kept safe, applies.
You plug in the drive, your PC should recognize it full 6 TB, all as one drive as it is, and you continue on partitioning and formatting; just don't forget to format it in NTFS, so that you don't have problems.
Here is the Specification Sheet of the WD Green hard drive, there is a column about the 6 TB one:
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...879-800026.pdf

I hope I've helped! :)
Cheers!

CK_WD

Hey CK_WD,

Thanks for the response. I was reading up on some 4TB Drives, and they require the motherboard to have a specific setting, otherwise Windows only recognizes 3TB of Space. I'll gather specifics when I wake up. I'm currently at work right now.

---------Edit----------

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822178338

If you read the specs on that hard drive, it says with software, Windows can read 3TB & 4TB Drives, without having UEFI. My current motherboard doesn't have UEFI, which is what I'm concerned with.

You have to format drives over 2TB (technically, 2.2TB but no one makes one that size) under GPT instead of MBR to be able to get the entire capacity of the disk in one volume. If your MOBO won't permit GPT, then you would have to split the HDD into 2TB partitions.

I'm personally would be leery of the 6TB drives until they have been out a while longer, especially the brand new technology of WD's Helium drives (sold under the HGST label). 4TB seems to be the sweet spot for cost and reliability for the Greens; the 3TB Greens have been getting poorer customer reviews than the 2 & 4 TB Greens. I use my Greens only as backup drives that are connected to my computer for only a few minutes a day so, in theory, they should last a long time (although I have one 2TB Green that is showing 304 reallocated sectors in the SMART attributes; fortunately, it's still under warranty).

For permanently installed HDDs, I prefer the WD Blacks since my computer runs 24/7, the Blacks are noticeably snappier than the Greens, and they have a five year warranty vs. the two year warranty of the Greens. One of the 2TB Blacks I have in my computer has been running pretty much continuously for 580 days (I do a weekly reboot once a week and shut the computer down only if I'm going to be out of town more than a day); the other 2TB Black has been running 535 days. Both are still going strong.

There is another disadvantage to very large drives. It takes for ever to do anything thing with them.
Cleaning, defragging, scanning and testing them ect. If one partitions them it will shorten the time.
Myself I would rather have more smaller drives. It is just easier to work with.
Do the maintenance on one drive while using the others.

I shut down my PC daily, due to parental figures complaining about power consumption. The irony in the complaint is, we pay 3 cents per kilowatt.

Most of what I'd store on there is my media collection. I've been rapidly expanding my media, and I'm about 35% away from filling up my current drives. Most of this media wouldn't be accessed on a constant basis, and those that would be, I'd have on my primary drive. I'm a clutter bug, I save multiple versions of any software I use. Like Adobe products, I have Adobe CS - Adobe CC. I won't be able to upgrade a good chunk of my computer for quite some time, so I'm looking at an alternative.

Buying 1 drive for 260$ vs 2 Drives for 150$-ish is something I'd like to avoid. Eventually I'll grab a NAS and fill 5 bays with 4TB drives and RAID them, but I'm poor due to debt paying.

Hope that puts my position in perspective for you guys.

I'm going to eventually upgrade my motherboard, but it won't be until spring/summer, debt & car come first. I've allotted some spare cash for purchasing a HDD to expand my collection.

@ CKWD - Does that software impact performance?

I'm not rushing out and purchasing this, but next month I will be grabbing one. The only reason I'm considering 6TB is due to the space vs cost issue, and my work's NAS System Administrator suggested it to me. I'll keep watching reviews, and see whats a better option. Ideally, I'd like to just get 4x 4TB and rock a WDRaptor for my primary since I can't use SSD (Crappy MOBO! ), but I have to wait to buy my toys

Layback Bear said:

There is another disadvantage to very large drives. It takes for ever to do anything thing with them.
Cleaning, defragging, scanning and testing them ect. If one partitions them it will shorten the time.
Myself I would rather have more smaller drives. It is just easier to work with.
Do the maintenance on one drive while using the others.

Granted, testing and cleaning a large single partition will take longer but no longer than smaller partitions will take combined, possibly even a little less. When I got my two 4TB drives, I just formatted and tested them by starting them early in the evening and letting them run overnight in my internal dock (runs off an internal SATA port). If using a USB 2.0 dock, it will take longer but it won't hurt to just let it run a day or more until finished. Once formatted and initially tested, all you really need to do with a HDD is check the SMART attributes once in a while (I use Speccy for that; it only takes me less than a minute to check all four of my internal drives) and defrag them on a regular basis. I have Win 7's defragger set to automagically run once a week overnight on my three internal HDDs (SSDs should never be defragged); I don't have to even think about it. Win 7's defragger works just fine and is plenty fast.

Most of the time, there is no real need to partition a HDD unless you use it both for the OS and data storage. Then, you should have three partitions: one for the system reserved (usually 100MB), one for the OS and Programs, and the remaining space for a data partition. Otherwise, multiple partitions are an inefficient use of HDD space; folders are a far more efficient way to organize data on a drive.

DreadStarX said:

I'm going to eventually upgrade my motherboard, but it won't be until spring/summer, debt & car come first. I've allotted some spare cash for purchasing a HDD to expand my collection.

@ CKWD - Does that software impact performance?

I'm not rushing out and purchasing this, but next month I will be grabbing one. The only reason I'm considering 6TB is due to the space vs cost issue, and my work's NAS System Administrator suggested it to me. I'll keep watching reviews, and see whats a better option. Ideally, I'd like to just get 4x 4TB and rock a WDRaptor for my primary since I can't use SSD (Crappy MOBO! ), but I have to wait to buy my toys

Why couldn't you use an SSD with your present MOBO? Even if all you have are SATA II ports, an SSD should still work and will still give better performance (albeit not quite as much as SATA III).