External hard drives of 3 TB or larger

[bulajap]

Hi everyone......

I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

I am looking to buy an external hard drive of 3 TB or larger.

I have heard that Windows 7 will not recognize any external hard drive over 2 TB, expecially when using the Windows 7 built-in backup. Is this true?

If so, is there a way to get Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit to recognize external hard drives 3 TB or larger?

thank you

 

[Brink]

Hello Balujap,

It comes down to it having a MBR file system. The MBR file system will on see up to 2 TB per partition, so you could create a 2TB and 1TB partitions on the 3TB HDD to be able to use all of it as is.

If you like, you could also convert the drive to have a GPT file system (if it's not already) instead of MBR. This way all 3TB will be available with one partition.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26193-convert-mbr-disk-gpt-disk.html
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Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

It just may be an external drive that size will come already formatted as GPT.