Problems with 4tb 6GB/s drive on my (sata gen2) HP Z600?

[sydjimi]

I upgraded the internal sata drive in my HP Z600 with a sata Gen3 4tb 6GB/s HDD. Since the motherboard in the Z600 only supports older sata gen 2 3GB/s I have had big problems. In fact, the disk is now not recognized on startup and I have essentially lost all the data.

I am really confused now about what HDD is safe to use? Is it the high capacity 4tb that is causing the problem, in which case I could maybe have more luck with a 2tb 6GB/s drive. Or should I avoid gen3 sata alltogether. They are supposed to be backwards compatable but that has not been my experience. HP have not been very helpful, they say it is best to stick with gen 2 HDDs but they are getting harder to get and 1tb drives are not high enough capacity for the work that I do. Any ideas?

 

[Dereck47]

Is it the high capacity 4tb that is causing the problem, in which case I could maybe have more luck with a 2tb 6GB/s drive.

Correct. Your problem has nothing to do with the drive being SATA 3 (6Gb/s) or SATA 2 (3Gb/s).
Your problem is that the capacity is greater than 2TB.

If you want to use the drive as your O/S (boot) drive then your motherboard has to have a UEFI BIOS. The HP Z600 does not have a UEFI BIOS.

If you want to use the drive as a secondary drive then it must 1st be initialized as a GPT volume.


Here's some additional info for you: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408

 

[sydjimi]

Is it the high capacity 4tb that is causing the problem, in which case I could maybe have more luck with a 2tb 6GB/s drive.

Correct. Your problem has nothing to do with the drive being SATA 3 (6Gb/s) or SATA 2 (3Gb/s).
Your problem is that the capacity is greater than 2TB.

If you want to use the drive as your O/S (boot) drive then your motherboard has to have a UEFI BIOS. The HP Z600 does not have a UEFI BIOS.

If you want to use the drive as a secondary drive then it must 1st be initialized as a GPT volume.


Here's some additional info for you: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408

Thanks so much for that answer, really glad to have that confirmed. The solution I have chosen is to go with 2 separate 2tb gen 3 drives. They are both secondary drives, (the OS is on an SSD), in your opinion, should I still format them as GPT or given that they are only 2tb, should I format as MBR? Thanks again for your help, this is the first time I have ever posted on an IT forum

 

[Dereck47]

Set them as MBR since they're only 2TB.