Question What would happen to HDD with data if connected to SATA to USB docking station exceeding its max capacity, e.g. 14Tb HDD in max 12Tb cradle?

[AlexMysh]

Hi everyone!
I have a 14Tb 3.5" HDD with data.
I do not have desktop anymore, only Win11 laptop.
Thus, I need to connect my 14TB HDD to the laptop via USB.

The problem is that I cannot find on my local market any model of USB to SATA that supports more than 12TB data of storage.
I also need an access to S.M.A.R.T and have an ability to run Low-level HDD service programs like Victoria HDD to test surface etc.

I spend a day googling the topic. However without any reliable answers, only guesses of users claiming that the limitation is marketing and it should not apply in real.
I am concerned with the information that those SATA->USB devices has cyclic addresses, that means when writing beyond the limit it may overwrite the beginning of address of HDD -> data corruption.

For example, Ugreen model 60561EU claims 12TB max capacity.

Does anyone have done a real experiments with exceeding documented HDD capacity with rather new SATA->USB devices?
(The 2TB limit is known to be due to 32bit address, but in case >4Tb it may have other reasons)

 

[USAFRet]

It will almost certainly work.

I have a USB 3.0 dock from Amazon (Cable Matters), almost 6 years old.

I've used it with 14-16-18TB drives, no problem.
Just last week with a 14TB.

As far as the SMART data, mine reads from CrystalDiskInfo just fine.

 

[AlexMysh]

Thanks for this information!
So maybe models that can read S.M.A.R.T do not have such limitations. I have encountered another such device description with explanation:

Supports any standard SATA drive
The SATA-V is perfect for a wide array of tasks and has many advantages over traditional external hard drives. Some common uses include recovering data off of disk drives pulled from non-working computers, cloning drives, and using inexpensive original equipment manufacturer (OEM) drives to use as rotating and off-site backups.
Any standard SATA interface drive is supported from traditional 3.5 inch mechanical spinning disk drives to 2.5 inch solid state drives. Hybrid drives (combination spinning disk and solid state) are also supported.
Drives up to 8TB have been tested and confirmed compatible and the dock supports 48-bit LBA which should support drives as large as 128 PiB (Pebibyte) assuming the host computer operating system supports drives of that size.

 

[Bob.B]

Hi everyone!
I have a 14Tb 3.5" HDD with data.
I do not have desktop anymore, only Win11 laptop.
Thus, I need to connect my 14TB HDD to the laptop via USB.

The problem is that I cannot find on my local market any model of USB to SATA that supports more than 12TB data of storage.
I also need an access to S.M.A.R.T and have an ability to run Low-level HDD service programs like Victoria HDD to test surface etc.

I spend a day googling the topic. However without any reliable answers, only guesses of users claiming that the limitation is marketing and it should not apply in real.
I am concerned with the information that those SATA->USB devices has cyclic addresses, that means when writing beyond the limit it may overwrite the beginning of address of HDD -> data corruption.

For example, Ugreen model 60561EU claims 12TB max capacity.

Does anyone have done a real experiments with exceeding documented HDD capacity with rather new SATA->USB devices?
(The 2TB limit is known to be due to 32bit address, but in case >4Tb it may have other reasons)

If I had important stuff on the hdd and it was the only copy I would find a desktop and make a backup.

Only then would I play with the dock.

If nothing important then plug it in and test.

 

[USAFRet]

If I had important stuff on the hdd and it was the only copy I would find a desktop and make a backup.

That should be the case always.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Does anyone have done a real experiments with exceeding documented HDD capacity with rather new SATA->USB devices?
(The 2TB limit is known to be due to 32bit address, but in case >4Tb it may have other reasons)

Some USB SATA boxes/adapters require drive to be re-partitioned/reformatted, before it can be used.
This is because adapter uses sector size different from windows standard (4k sectors vs 512 byte sectors).

 

[fzabkar]

My observation of most retailers is that the only things they know about their products are how much they cost and how many they can move. This 12TB limit is a classic example.

Let's assume that for some unfathomable reason modern bridge firmware has a capacity limit which is less than the 48 bits allowed in the ATA spec. We would expect such a limit to be expressed in terms of the maximum number of bits assigned to this parameter.

IDEMA calculates standard storage capacities using the following formula:

total LBAs = 97696368 + (1953504 x (number_of_GBs – 50))​

If we convert the number of LBAs to binary, we get ...

0b10101110101010000011001011010110000 12TB
0b11001011110001000011100110010110000 14TB
0b11101000111000000100000001010110000 16TB
0b100000101111111000100011100010110000 18TB
0b100100011000110000100110111010110000 20TB

Capacities less than 18TB can fit within 35 bits, while capacities of 18TB or greater require 36 bits. Therefore, if there were some arbitrary limit of 35 bits, we should still be able to address 14TB and 16TB capacities.

 

[AlexMysh]

If I had important stuff on the hdd and it was the only copy I would find a desktop and make a backup.

Only then would I play with the dock.

If nothing important then plug it in and test.

This is my situation - i do not have an access to desktop PC where this disk was used. and this HDD is the only one I have with data, backups are stored far away. So it's better not to access it via SARTA->USB in my situation.

 

[AlexMysh]

My observation of most retailers is that the only things they know about their products are how much they cost and how many they can move. This 12TB limit is a classic example.

Let's assume that for some unfathomable reason modern bridge firmware has a capacity limit which is less than the 48 bits allowed in the ATA spec. We would expect such a limit to be expressed in terms of the maximum number of bits assigned to this parameter.

IDEMA calculates standard storage capacities using the following formula:

total LBAs = 97696368 + (1953504 x (number_of_GBs – 50))​

If we convert the number of LBAs to binary, we get ...

0b10101110101010000011001011010110000 12TB
0b11001011110001000011100110010110000 14TB
0b11101000111000000100000001010110000 16TB
0b100000101111111000100011100010110000 18TB
0b100100011000110000100110111010110000 20TB

Capacities less than 18TB can fit within 35 bits, while capacities of 18TB or greater require 36 bits. Therefore, if there were some arbitrary limit of 35 bits, we should still be able to address 14TB and 16TB capacities.

I think the limitation is not technical (e.g. why use only 35 bits?) but marketing. Lack of information on the subject shocked me. I could not find any testing review anywhere with this issue pointed out. All materials I could find were about speed. Youtubers used 1-4Tb HDDs, moreover new ones without any data.

Even there is little information regarding hardware tray, e.g. is this convertors a pass-through so that HDDs looks for PC as if they are SATA, or no.

 

[fzabkar]

I think the limitation is not technical (e.g. why use only 35 bits?) but marketing. Lack of information on the subject shocked me. I could not find any testing review anywhere with this issue pointed out. All materials I could find were about speed. Youtubers used 1-4Tb HDDs, moreover new ones without any data.

Even there is little information regarding hardware tray, e.g. is this convertors a pass-through so that HDDs looks for PC as if they are SATA, or no.

I agree, it's an artificial marketing limitation.

My calculations were intended to demonstrate that an artificial limitation of 35 bits would still allow a capacity of 16TB, thereby confirming the artificial nature of the limitation. I'm not suggesting that limiting the capacity to 35 bits makes any sense from an engineering perspective.