6TB HDD Support

[DreadStarX]

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]

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/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-800026.pdf

I hope I've helped!
Cheers!

CK_WD

 

[DreadStarX]

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/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-800026.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/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178338

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.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

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.

 

[Layback Bear]

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.

 

[DreadStarX]

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.

 

[CKWD]

That detail about the motherboard is new now.
It's true that UEFI BIOS is needed for the system to recognize a drive larger than 2 TB.
For the WD Green 6 TB there is also a software option to run on Windows without UEFI, that is the WD Align software powered by Acronis. It works with Windows XP, Vista and 7:
WD Support / Downloads

Of course, your other option would be to change the motherboard to a UEFI BIOS but if you can't do that, the WD software should do the trick.

Cheers!

CK_WD

 

[DreadStarX]

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

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

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.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

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).

 

[Layback Bear]

Totally agree. A ssd on sata II is many times faster than any hard drive ever made.
I have one system which my ssd is using sata II because sata III is Marvell. Marvell is nothing but a head ache.

When doing just normal computer things I can't tell and speed difference between sata II or III using ssd's.

 

[mjf]

One of my older PCs only has sata II and I put an SSD as the main OS drive and the performance gain is worth it. Sequential speeds are restricted on sata II compared to sata III but the 4K speeds are WAY ahead of a HDD.

 

[CKWD]

Hey again DreadStarX!

The performance shouldn't be overall affected other than your system should be able to read the hard drive with it's full capacity. But I suppose it would depend on your build as a whole. Your motherboard sounds like it could give out problems.
As I hear how you describe your situation, I'd say that you should first of all change your motherboard if it's giving you so much headaches. From there one, by choosing a better one, may be even with UEFI BIOS, your doubts and questions about the hard drives would disappear and you may even not need to use an alignment software.
Secondly, you need the big capacity HDD to store data on it, as in music etc., is that correct? I'm asking this because the WD Green are designed for back ups and archiving and perhaps wouldn't be that great in loading massive programs and such, as to their design.
Lastly, I would agree with all the others, you should be able to run a SSD on your motherboard even if SATA II, but as I said, if the motherboard's being such an issue, you should replace that first.

Just in case, the link below is on how to use the WD Alignment Tool, from the WD Knowledge Base:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...vLzEvdGltZS8xNDE1Nzc3NjgzL3NpZC90czU1ZWQ3bQ==

Cheers and best of luck!

CK_WD

 

[DreadStarX]

Hey again DreadStarX!

The performance shouldn't be overall affected other than your system should be able to read the hard drive with it's full capacity. But I suppose it would depend on your build as a whole. Your motherboard sounds like it could give out problems.
As I hear how you describe your situation, I'd say that you should first of all change your motherboard if it's giving you so much headaches. From there one, by choosing a better one, may be even with UEFI BIOS, your doubts and questions about the hard drives would disappear and you may even not need to use an alignment software.
Secondly, you need the big capacity HDD to store data on it, as in music etc., is that correct? I'm asking this because the WD Green are designed for back ups and archiving and perhaps wouldn't be that great in loading massive programs and such, as to their design.
Lastly, I would agree with all the others, you should be able to run a SSD on your motherboard even if SATA II, but as I said, if the motherboard's being such an issue, you should replace that first.

Just in case, the link below is on how to use the WD Alignment Tool, from the WD Knowledge Base:
How to use the Acronis Alignment Tool to realign an Advanced Format drive

Cheers and best of luck!

CK_WD

My MOBO is quite peculiar about adding and removing devices. If I open the case, most of my drives disappear on the POST boot. I'm looking for a high capacity drive for archiving mostly. Nothing would be installed to the drive, it would mostly store software installations, and would act as a intermediate drive when I upgrade my PC at a later date.

I'm eventually going to upgrade my motherboard, the problem is, I'm still running a Quad 2 Core 2.66Ghz (OCd to 2.83Ghz) processor. The new rig I plan on building, I'll have SATA III and AMPLE space for hard drives. This would be a temporary solution for a temporary problem. I'm going to go ahead and order the drive in December when I have a spare $300. I plan on building a media center server for my family. I won't go into details, but that's the plan!

 

[CKWD]

This is a good plan you have for the near future.
Well then, basically, wrapping things up, you need to research the software, align the drive and use it like this till you improve your motherboard.
I hope you don't have any problems and best of luck!

CK_WD

 

[Digerati]

One thing I like about this 6Tb drive is it is a 5400RPM drive. And that's a good thing, IMO. Slower speeds means less noise, less power consumption and less heat generation. But because the data density is MUCH greater, the data transfer speeds is greatly improved over 7200RPM 3Tb drives. Watch the 7200 vs 5400 video in that Newegg link for a good explanation.