I have an older Windows 7 PC that I am still using and what I would like to do is to expand my existing backup capacity. Currently I have multiple internal 2 TB SATA Hard Drives. 2 TB SATA Drives are the largest that Windows 7 will recognize. What I propose doing is to buy several External much greater than 2 TB Hard Drives (USB). I would periodically backup internal to external using a Linux (Probably Linux Mint) Live DVD. I know that Linux can recognize the larger drives since they will be formatted ntfs. Question: Will Linux be able to recognize the large USB Drives? Will the older BIOS see the larger drives? I guess that I could just buy one large USB Drive and test it. Thanks in Advance.
Windows 7 should recognize any external. I have several 4TBs and two 8TB drives working on Windows 7. Some WDs and Seagates. EDIT: Those drives will usually come formatted as "xFat". I have had many problems using xFat on the larger drives. I suggest reformatting to NTFS before trying to use them.
Thanks. I will give it a try next week and give some feedback. I just ordered one each of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LS5NFQ2/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PV7G1D2/
Probably wouldn't hurt to read this: Windows support for hard disks exceeding 2 TB - Windows Server | Microsoft Learn Also, I agree, exFAT sucks.
I would suggest you cancel the mentioned orders and look at this: https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Port...ds=6tb hard drive&qid=1712933879&s=pc&sr=1-10 It will plug into any USB port without having to use an external power source and the Seagate's are really easy to repair. Actually you can upgrade the storage with bigger 2.5 inch internal drives. I have old Seagate drives that failed and replaced the internal drives with WD Black 7200 rpm drives. Or this one which is what I'm using in 4TB versions 'Backup Plus" https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Backup-External-Drive-Portable/dp/B07MY44VNM
I changed my mind again. I'm glad I cancelled the Amazon order because I didn't notice the hard drive that I ordered was Refurbished. I like ONLY New. I ordered these three items instead: Lay flat hard drive dock (It costs more but I like the fan.): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013WODZH0 4 TB New WD Blue Hard Drive: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B087QTVCHH Multiple Hard Drive cases for storing current & future hard drives: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018VKBYWI I forgot that new internal hard drives come not formatted. When I first connected to Windows 7 and powered up the external drive Windows 7 would not recognized the drive. I then decided to boot with BootIt Bare Metal and have a look at what could be seen. BootIt Bare Metal was showing a not formatted 2 TB disk space. I looked around and figured out that I needed to change to a GPT disk type which then showed the larger disk space. I created a single partition and formatted ntfs (I do not own a MAC). When I booted Windows 7 the new drive was showing up. I am in currently in the process of backing up one of my internal 2 TB drives to the new external 4 TB drive. Thanks again for your suggestions.
I didn't look very close at this article. Is it possible to swap out the four (4) data only 2 TB drives with new 4 TB drives in my Windows 7 64 bit PC? I just need to make the new 4 TB drives GPT, formatted NTFS?
I just ordered three (3) more 4 TB hard drives. Eventually, I may physically migrate the 4 TB hard drives to the PC, thus replacing the aging 2 TB hard drives.
Not long after individually backing up each internal drive to each corresponding external drive, I powered down the PC, switched out each hard drive with the new ones and powered back up. No issues were encountered.
TheKid7, I don't have a HD that size. Can you do me a favour and check the sector size. Are the sectors 4K native?
Code: Fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo x: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/t...-storage/support-policy-4k-sector-hard-drives Jack has posted a similar link.
One of the 4 TB drives. I assume that the others are the same. Bytes Per Sector : 512 Bytes Per Physical Sector : 4096 Bytes Per Cluster : 4096 Bytes Per FileRecord Segment : 1024 Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Thanks for that. It doesn't have 4K native sectors. No problem. Using it as a GPT disk is what I'd do too. If you have 4K native sectors then you can have a 16 TB MBR disk. Without 4K native sectors a MBR disk is limited to 2 TB. .
