Question INTEL Z77 chipset SATA port drive capacity limits.

[kanomi]

I have motherboard with INTEL Z77 chipset and have been using 3 tb SATA for years. I know certain chipsets have limits on the max drive capacity they will support. I wish to know what the maximum dive capacity supported in the Z77. Motherboard manual says 3 tb+. What does '+' mean in this context? Or is it just advertising? Please Advise.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

You might want to mention the make and model of the motherboard, since Z77 is the chipset and Intel is the maker of said chipset though board makers can and will vary.

 

[kanomi]

Thanks for the prompt response. I have an ASUS P8Z77-V LX motherboard I have been using since 2012.

 

[lordmogul]

I would read "3 TB+" as "this supports 3TB and larger drives"
Older systems don't support GPT, and MBR has a limitation of 2 TiB capacity.
The manufacture simply makes clear that the system indeed supports drives over 2 TiB, without going into the technical part.

For GPT the maximum size is 8 ZiB with 512 byte sectors and 64 ZiB with 4K sectors. That gives you about 8 billion TiB as a physical minimum limit.
You'd run into size limits with NTFS before that. At the most current version (since Win 10 1709 and Server 2019) it is limited to 8 PiB per volume, but you could just format the drive with a million partitions to solve that. And i mean a real, literal million.
But I doubt you'd meet any of these limits before the hardware itself is retired.