Does M4N78 PRO support 3TB disks?

[Scratchy]

I'm gonna buy a new HDD and wonder if my setup support a 3TB SATA disk?

[Caviar Green / 64MB / 3TB]

I have M4N78 PRO, Win7 64bit and AHCI.

 

[bassfisher6522]

I have the same board and I'm not quite sure either. Not sure if there is a limitation on how many hdd's and what size. I don't see anything is the manual that's online from Asus.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Motherboards- ASUS M4N78 PRO

 

[Scratchy]

Ok, I have 4 hdd's and one DVD drive. Only one SATA left.

Answer from Asus

This motherboard has a total of six SATA 3GB/s ports.

Due to Microsoft limitation, the MBR (Main Boot Record) partition table is the default option for initializing hard disks. However, the MBR partition table can only manage up to a 2TB partition. So you can use a 3TB disk but you probably wont be able to use the HDDs whole capacity.

 

[bassfisher6522]

Well there you go....good catch. I looked right over it. Now, for my board, it's the older version of the new one....in order to use the other two sata ports I have to use either AHCI or RAID. So far I have no need to add anything yet...lol.

 

[jimbo45]

Ok, I have 4 hdd's and one DVD drive. Only one SATA left.

Answer from Asus

This motherboard has a total of six SATA 3GB/s ports.

Due to Microsoft limitation, the MBR (Main Boot Record) partition table is the default option for initializing hard disks. However, the MBR partition table can only manage up to a 2TB partition. So you can use a 3TB disk but you probably wont be able to use the HDDs whole capacity.

Hi there

If you change the disk from MBR to GPT you can have up to 18 EB (yes EB if you can find a disk large enough !!).

Tutorial here from this very forum.

Shame some of the "Tech advice" given to you by Asus seems woefully inadequate or not complete -- true that an MBR disk can have max 2TB partition but they should have told you OTHER possibilities too.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26193-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-disk.html

cheers
jimbo

 

[Scratchy]

Thanks!

18 EB isn't that bad Then I don't have to worry about a 3TB disk

 

[Scratchy]

I bought a Western Green 3TB but I only see 801,6GB in BIOS and 746,39GB in Windows

Update 1: BIOS updated. Doesn't help!
Update 2: Changed from AHCI to SATA mode in BIOS. It worked

Now I'm formatting the drive. It takes some time. When it has finished I'll try change to AHCI again and hopefully everything works fine then

At the moment I can't use one hdd and my dvd drive. It's because they are in the two black sata ports which only works with AHCI.

Update 3: The computer freeze when formatting. Then I restart but the pc just freezes. I can't enter win anymore.

Update 4: Removed the new drive and everythings fine! Wonder if it got broken?