Asus Software Unlocks HDDs With Over 2.2 TB

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Unfortunately my ASUS laptop's LCD panel went this weekend and I've had it about 18 months. I won't be buying another another ASUS laptop. New LCD panel gets here next week but you shouldn't have to replace a panel 18 months in. I've had laptops from when they weighed 20lbs and this is the first time the display has went.[/citation]
All products have units that malfunction, that's why warranty exists. What really matters is the rate a failure and ASUS is usually the manufacturer with the best failure rate.

 

[meradz]

I agree that BIOS needs to die a horrible, miserable death. The OS though, also plays a part in this. Linux is capable of booting to a GPT disk with a BIOS motherboard. It does this by creating a BIOS partition on the hard drive for proper alignment of the GPT and to ensure that the GPT does not get overwritten and corrupted.

Windows unfortunately still does not support booting to GPT. I eagerly await the time it does.

 

[techguy378]

As far as I know any Intel motherboard that supports Core 2 processors has EFI and supports hard drives greater than 2.2TB. Upgrading to a new motherboard is cheap as long as you don't need all of those fancy extras like SLI/Crossfire and RAID.

 

[tmc]

A whole class of current manufactured motherboards will be obsolete once 3tb+ drives become mainstream (ie the price drops $100-$150) from the current msrp of $250. Anything that can be done to extend the life is a good idea. including the drive makers including a pcie sata card fixing the problem.

 

[molo9000]

Apple has been using EFI since they shipped the first Intel Mac back in 2006.

 

[MU_Engineer]

[citation][nom]molo9000[/nom]Apple has been using EFI since they shipped the first Intel Mac back in 2006.[/citation]

And Intel has been using it for Itaniums since 2000. Intel developed EFI and there were several branded non-Apple x86 machines that used it before Apple did, and Intel also used/uses EFI/UEFI in several of their own branded motherboards. Apple was just the first large consumer OEM that used it widely in their branded OEM systems.

 

[molo9000]

[citation][nom]MU_Engineer[/nom]And Intel has been using it for Itaniums since 2000. Intel developed EFI and there were several branded non-Apple x86 machines that used it before Apple did, and Intel also used/uses EFI/UEFI in several of their own branded motherboards. Apple was just the first large consumer OEM that used it widely in their branded OEM systems.[/citation]

I didn't say anything to the contrary.

 

[MU_Engineer]

I was just pointing out that Apple wasn't the first to implement EFI, because that's a pretty common misconception. Rumor has it the biggest reason Apple implemented EFI is to make booting MacOS on non-Apple machines difficult enough to dissuade people from running MacOS without paying the Apple Hardware Tax.

 

[molo9000]

I think Apple was the first to implement it on consumer machines rather than workstations or servers.

 

[soundping]

I use a ASUS M4A79XTD EVO and if I try using three 1tb drives my bios totally freaks.

 

[chaos133]

So if I were to get a 3TB HDD, and run it on a motherboard with BIOS, I would still be able to use the whole 3TB in Windows 7 x64, but not be able to boot an OS with it. Is this correct?

 

[rwpritchett]

^Correct.

GPT drives are supported as data drives in all x64 versions of Windows

taken from this Anandtech article that explains the 2.2TB limit very well.

 

[musiccitytom]

I tumbled into this bear-trap after buying 3 x Hitachi 3TB SATA-600 HDD on sale @ $200. My trusty old P5B Premium 775 Q9550 would not even see these as a 2.2TB drive. They showed up as about 775GB drives; ouch!
Tried 2 of them in my new Dlink NAS & got 2.19TB each, before mirroring them. But 2TB drives are much cheaper (

 

[musiccitytom]

After reading forums for the last 3 days, I found the answer today, just before seeing the article. I picked up a 4-bay ProRaid tower on sale for $125. After going back to the online manual, I got it set up for Raid-5 & popped 3 of the 3TB drives in. To my surprise, it came up with a striped set of 5589GB and is setup as a single USB external drive in Win 7. No bios hacks, no new motherboard & cpu ($400+), no expensive Raid cards, etc. I could add a 4th 3TB drive, just to see it- almost 9TB in one volume- the box takes care of the rest.