Seagate has confirmed a 3TB drive

when the exobyte drive has been made then we can talk about breakthrough tech until then let me sleep. I've already downloaded over 2 Tb of porn on my computer I need more space!!!

almost large enough for the average IT persons porn collection..

Jokes aside, we hit these limits every couple of years in PC land. It's no big deal.
There are ways around everything.
From LOAD HIMEM.SYS to LBA itself to PAE, there have been limitations that have always been overcome without many people noticing.

... should be enough for anyone, amirite?

That aside, MBR doesn't support devices over 2.1TB.

No x86 (32 or 64 bit) hardware is available for running EFI with windows.

You can not boot windows on a 2.1TB+ drive without an EFI bios and GPT support in the OS.

What you can do is make the controllers smarter, good brand raid controllers have been working around this problem for a long time with 3 methods:

LBA64 - simply hand over the whole drive to the OS, and let it deal with it (read: use GPT). (not bootable unless you have EFI bios)

4K Sectors - realign the drive and use it with 4K sectors, lets windows (even back to windows XP) work with the drive happily. (best solution, fully usable and bootable)

Slicing - the drive gets chopped up into chunks of no larger than... 2.1TB. The OS can re-connect them (using dynamic drives and a JBOD in software, un-bootable though) or not at its leisure.

Problems do have solutions you know, a lifetime of effing up fixed in one, determined flash... yeah, we need bios to be dumped and replaced with EFI asap :)

ITs not an LBA issue entirely but a 32bit windows issue as 32 bit windows cannot see past 32 bit LBA address's so even with LBA 48bit, 32bit windows cannot address any higher then LBA 32bit

its the same for system memory but this time its for storage needing 64bit windows to address more then 32bit worth of system memory address'

and you cant fix something thats limited by its own addressing system for people saying that microsoft need to make 32bit windows efi compatible to solve this problem as its a hardware limitation for 32 bit systems

the other thing is its not a simple fact of making more then 1 partition again as the LBA is the system used to read the cylinders heads and sectors on a HDD itself and translates it into a format windows can understand so if a drive is larger then 32bit LBA then 32bit systems get confused by the information given which is why they show a massively reduced amount of space

It's not a File System limitation (which is what prompted all of those 2 gig FAT16 partitions back in the day), it's a supposed LBA limitation. That means you'll see the return of BIOS extenders the last time we hit BIOS issues with drive size (Such as the 8 gig limit and the 128 gig limit before LBA-48).

Drive letters are a tool of the devil. Out! Satanspawncacodemon!

What prevents using partition letters C to X for 22 * 2TB parttions?
(leaving out A and B while supprting BlueRay on Y and USB on Z)
Therefore being able to use a 44TB drive with old 32bit Win XP and old BIOS? Huh?

When THAT runs out it's time to finally go for 64bit Windows 8
plus the new BIOS with EXAbyte support
and maybe, just maybe, you could use bigger sectors than just mere 512 bytes = ½KB (I'm using 4KB everywhere)

;-)

Good Lord! It's almost like that unfortunate business when CPUs went multicore, and drives exceeded 1.99GB, and graphics card bandwidth exceeded the PCI bus, and RAM capacities exceeded 32bit address space, and ethernet exceeded 10 BaseT!

New devices that need new software and hardware to support them? Oh noes! To think that it would come to THIS and a 3TB drive would stop the world dead in its tracks and re-ignite the whole PC / Apple got there first slagging match!

I'm going back to bed. Wake me up when they're supported and affordable. YAWN.

BTW SSD/HDD is Smaller SataIII, probably Is 3TB,too 64 bit only becoming Letter of Day.

More than one controller for SSD/HDD is suggested or will one drive library dominate Multi Drive.P.U. Core Job Still In Progress. Take MainsPower Core issues, 8,12,16 power Nodes,+, & Turning off of Power Cores & Plus cores, 16+2-8. Well, perfect in mapping out NEW multi core & do mean multi, with latest two/2core images hanging off middle lines, one mirror Plus on far side another mirror job,vetical to orig hortizonatal cores in row. So thrid set of cores is emerging in photos,Unique. just geting right power to right cores is feat. Controling beast & feed, Wow, Maybe be ultie'

Found X3 goes readily to X4, Just NOT same X4, as boxed X4, defective or Crippled unit, maybe many ways to cripple X4 to X3. So Less. Ahso, Mappless.

Now thing X4 to X6, reported X4 may be dropped, why NOT Make ALL X6. Yet chossing which cores to fire up, how they be used. ALL Future NOW. Shurely want at lest 500 Gb Partitions or larger. Screaming library buffer with few power games,Or Local Intrest of Often Moment, DDR3 now already sold in 2,500 Mhz/s, so breaking above DDR2. Substaintually. Chip on Disc. Core Mapping & Now, 64 Ahoy or be really UnCool less than 3TB Swab. Gib Core Flicker try, Really learn from BeDazling Near misses & prolonged Agony of Damage Control.

STeWie drashek MD

XP 64bit never had an issue either, ok didn't get you much further but would get you to about 6.5TB of space. As for Vista or 7 in 64bit not an issue at all.

As others have said though, these days nearly all new PC's are 64bit Windows installs, with a few in the cheapola bargain bin section which aren't but thats about it.

But the BIOS issue is going to be a pain short of the HDD makers bundling overlay software (again).

As for EFI motherboards, even before Vista launch DFI were selling a couple of motherboards (Windows has actually supported EFI since XP SP2, which was 2 years before a Mac got it)...didn't sadly last long though as were probably to few sold to justify them continuing to sell them, sad really. Only other way now is to buy a EFI card for a machine but they are a bit pricey (*cough* as in the same ones used when building a hackintosh) and only support certain chipsets.

This issue is nothing but a motherboard makers being to cheap on buying components sadly...but then again, who would want to boot off a 3TB HDD anyhow as you are going to have to buy two anyhow just so you can back the first one up to the second.

Boot to an SSD, leave this 3TB suitcase on for media, archival etc.

Would be great for the Seagate disk controller to present two logical drives, both under the 2.1TB limit.

To whoever was saying that 64-bit is tiny on windows.. there is absolutly no reason whatsoever to install 32-bit on a new machine today. Its 64-bit all the way baby :)

And for those who where afraid of installing Vista (Ver 6.0) wich IMHO was better than XP anyday of the week, there is now Win 7 (Ver 6.1).

Anyone who gets a new computer should install 64-bit unless there is some very special circumstances.

First, take a look at Newegg, Best Buy, Frys, and take an inventory of what systems are selling with. You'll note that most of them are 64 bit, for one.

Second, if you look at the Steam Hardware Survey, you'll see that Win 7 64 bit has over double the number of installations than 32 bit.

For three, OS X from 2001 did not support 3 TB drives either.

Oh, and "The Mobo makers are not going to release an EFI mobo until it becomes more "mainstream"."

Then Microsoft has no reason to support a non-existant product. It's not their job to take the lead on hardware development.

Since it's facts you're after, here are some:

On the document you referenced, Windows EFI support did not appear until Vista SP1 and Windows 7, and even then it's only on the 64-bit editions. That's a tiny slice of the Windows world.

So of course there would be little or no commodity motherboard support for EFI. Furthermore, EFI isn't supported at all on Windows XP, the version of Windows that is the overwhelming majority of Windows installations today.

Saying that "Windows supports EFI" is a very misleading thing for you to say, when infact only a very tiny percentage of very newly deployed Windows PC's in the world can actually support it.

OSX has had it as standard since 2006 on every Mac.

Well Dan, you aren't entirely correct here in your assertion that doesn't control the hardware. PeeCee Motherboard makers design their products to be compatible with Windows since that is the most often used OS on these commodity components. If you had bothered to actually READ the document you linked to, you'd see that EFI is only supported on 64 bit versions of Windows - a tiny portion of the market place today. The Mobo makers are not going to release an EFI mobo until it becomes more "mainstream". That means either a very rapid uptake of 64-bit Windows, OR microsoft fixes their broken 32 bit windows to be EFI compatible. Windows fanboi's DO make laugh, so thanks for the LOL's!!

LBA uses a 48-bit address. It can therefore address 2^48 blocks. If 512-byte blocks are used, this amounts to 131,072 TiB (or about 144,000 TB).

Windows (XP anyway, dont know about Fista or 7) imposes a further limit, due to its use of 32-bit cluster numbers and 4096-byte clusters, of 16 TiB (17.6 TB).

I dont know where you got 2.1 TB from.

Forgot to mention by end of 2010, so 6 months out. Supposedly Linux works with some sdded files & vista/7 just need updated . NO XP.Cost, 1.5X 2Tb or about $250 Smackers, maybe Less. Pushing 2 Tb Down under C Note is Fab.

SSD/HDD first to come is mere 4 Gb on SSD, More like HDD With Ready boost? Well at least extra cost might be nominial.

drashek

Microsoft is responsible for BIOS still being around? Microsoft isn't an absolute rule like Jobs and thus cannot control the hardware like he does.

Plus, Windows supports EFI partitioning schemes and booting, which you neglected to mention that during your slobbing of Apple.

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/firmware/UEFI_Windows.mspx

@Dan, the problem is *both* the legacy PC BIOS, and Microsoft Windows. The BIOS cannot boot from anything larger than 2.1 TB, and the LBA addressing scheme cannot address more than 2.1 TB with a 512 byte sector size. These are BIOS problems. Secondly, Microsoft Windows cannot "see" more than 2.1 TB due to the legacy MBR and DOS partition table that is still used today by all versions of Windows including 7. Microsoft needs to migrate away from the DOS partition table and Master Boot Record. The DOS Partition Table cannot address more than 2.1 TB so therefore the MBR will not be seen on a 2.1 TB volume. So yes, it is BOTH the bios, AND Microsoft Windows that are the problem here. Apple was smart to implement EFI on all their machines years ago, plus Apple moved to the newer GUID partition table, so right now today you can use a 3 TB disk on a modern Mac without issue.

So does these fabled EFI or UEFI motherboards exist yet ??

Can you please name some.. I was looking for them but that was at the time of Vista SP1 release.. at wich time there where none.. I did some web-searches at the time of Windows 7 launch.. but also found none.

And you are saying that WinVista/Win7 will have trouble with 3TB+ HDD's??

Is this only as a boot drive or is there trouble in general with this size.. either way its troubling news that this has not yet been taken care of :(

First it blames Windows, then goes on to blame classic BIOS. Which is it? If it's BIOS, then it's not Microsoft's fault. If it's Windows, then it doesn't matter if its BIOS or EFI.

Microsoft will have to "develop innovative new technology" to let Windows use a 3 TB drive. This will form the basis of Windows 8 and will be hailed as breakthrough technology.

Meanwhile, in Linux and UNIX land, it is business as usual.