Recommendations for a 3TB internal hard drive please

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I'm looking for a 3TB internal hard drive for my PC, i am not what you might call really PC savvy, i know enough to get by, so just looking for some advice really, if it helps my system info is as follows

Windows 7 home premium
Intel core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHZ
16GB RAM
64 Bit Operating system
1TB hard drive

I would probably go to a 4TB if the price was right, but for now best say 3TB, any informed advice greatly appreciated :)
 
Aren't there problems if you go above 2TB drives? I can't remember exactly but something about a drive over 2.19TB needs a sata controller that will support it etc.

I guess if the computer comes with it then it will be setup properly.
 
3tb as a data drive is easy.

3tb as a system drive, you need to be sure the motherboard can handle it (uefi boot or something) as normal bios cannot boot to over 2tb drives.
 
gman said:
Aren't there problems if you go above 2TB drives? I can't remember exactly but something about a drive over 2.19TB needs a sata controller that will support it etc.

I guess if the computer comes with it then it will be setup properly.
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Dale_tem said:
3tb as a data drive is easy.

3tb as a system drive, you need to be sure the motherboard can handle it (uefi boot or something) as normal bios cannot boot to over 2tb drives.
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Ok i didn't know about any of this, told you i was a technophobe :D so i guess it will have to be a 2TB, so will a 2TB be ok with the existing 1TB that is already in there ?
 
If you're keeping the 1tb as the windows drive having a 3tb should be fine.

As for makes/models, every drive has a horror storey if you look hard enough. I used to swear by Samsung who got bought out by seagate. Others swear by wd blacks.
 
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neil_g said:
If you're keeping the 1tb as the windows drive having a 3tb should be fine.
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Sorry Neil, could you elaborate a bit please, do you mean if i'm keeping the Windows 7 OS on the 1TB ? if thats what you mean yes i would be, i just want to add another hard drive for photos and music etc, i have a lot of pics and music on the 1TB, so i just want to transfer everything over, but the bigger internal hard drive i can use for this the better, as i don't want to have to do it again, and i would just use external if i have too in future.
 
If you keep the 1TB, the 3Tb will be fine as a data partition.
 
I read something similar, about 3Tb drives something along the lines of it can't read the info quick enough, I'd have a look on some geek sites and have a read up on 3Tb drives if I was you
 
bruno106a said:
I read something similar, about 3Tb drives something along the lines of it can't read the info quick enough, I'd have a look on some geek sites and have a read up on 3Tb drives if I was you
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It isn't that. It is a limit of 32bit. 2Tb is the max size. Good old BIOS is 32bit and so cannot boot to a drive bigger than 2TB.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408
 
Just bear in mind that although a 3TB drive in the PC is desireable, you would need a backup solution that can hold the 3TB. Alternatively you could look at RAID solutions to give you redundancy and expandable storage.

Losing 3TB's of data would be pretty epic, and certainly not the first time I've seen it happen!
 
Ok, maybe not NEED :D

Guess I've seen too many HDD failures with backups...
 
lmao, I only get the throbbing forehead vein pain when talking to customers about why a USB drive for network storage is a rubbish idea! :bang:
 
neil_g said:
sorry, backup and raid mentioned in the same statement.. gets the forehead vein throbbing :D
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:LOL: I trusted RAID as my primary backup a while ago, NEVER AGAIN !!

To boot with a larger than 2TB HDD I believe you require a 64 bit OS (Vista or later) a motherboard capable of UEFI along with a GPT initialised disk.....
 
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The BIOS can be a problem. I have a couple of 3 TB drives in my desktop (Win 7 64 bit) but connected directly to the SATA controller on the motherboard they both appear as 560 MB (from memory). I actually have them connected to a Highpoint RAID controller where they are their true size.

So the motherboard does make a difference. As does the OS; but newer Microsoft ones are OK. Apple and Linux (from memory) have been OK for the last 10 years - it was only Microsoft that didn't realise that bigger hard drives might appear one day.

As an aside, you can put 3 TB drives in an appropriate USB box (meaning one that supports hard disks of that size) and use them that way on computers that don't support 3 TB drives. I have a couple of 3 TB USB disks attached to my servers here which won't support the drives internally.
 
3tb is wasted as a system drive.

Use your current 1tb hard drive as the windows \ applications drive and use your new 3tb drive as storage for you data eg photo, music, films etc.

You will not have to worry about 3tb limits with this configuration and you have the benefit of the two drives making you pc a bit speedier.

Problem solved
 
Thanks for all the feedback on this, and apologies for not updating, i had forgot about it for a couple of weeks, anyway i called PC Specialist today, (they built the PC) and spoke to one of their techy guys, after looking at the spec of my PC he said 3TB would be fine, i can put 2x 3TB if i wanted too, the price was good too, £95 incl delivery, so i will just get one from them :)
 
consider using an SSD for your system drive and use the 3tb for data, the difference in performance is seriously worthwhile, plus SSD prices are so low it's rude not to!
 
willgill said:
consider using an SSD for your system drive and use the 3tb for data, the difference in performance is seriously worthwhile, plus SSD prices are so low it's rude not to!
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Not sure what you mean, i am keeping all my os and programs on the already installed 1tb drive, then when i install the new one, all my documents, photos and music etc will go on the new 3tb one, is this what you meant ?
 
i meant if money was available for it, transfer your OS and programs onto an SSD (solid state drive) the boot times and overall operating experience will improve, its by far the best upgrade to perform on a PC if you are still running with mechanical discs.

or potentially think about hybrid drives, which have a large chunk of solid state disc as well as a standard platter drive.

something like this

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-293-SE&groupid=1657&catid=1660&subcat=1893

just food for thought :)
 
Yup - 1 SSD drive as primary, then a big SATA drive as a data drive.

I run 2 2TB drives in Raid 1 on my main studio PC. This is *not* to serve as a backup just to protect me from a single disk failure. Backup is to rotated external disks that sit in caddies allow hot swapping.

I would tend to go for Western Digital drives. I have a good track record with them and have yet to have a failure.

WD do a number of ranges:

Blue - everyday
Green - low power
Black - high performance
RED - NAS (tweaks to firmware not much more)

Take your pick.
 
WD Black's are pretty good as written above, noticed a nice difference when I changed to them.

On another note, my Seagate 500Gb external drive just failed catastrophically, took it apart and its a Samsung drive, time to stump up for a Synology :D
 
redsnappa said:
3tb is wasted as a system drive.

Use your current 1tb hard drive as the windows \ applications drive and use your new 3tb drive as storage for you data eg photo, music, films etc.

You will not have to worry about 3tb limits with this configuration and you have the benefit of the two drives making you pc a bit speedier.

Problem solved
Click to expand...

Personally I would never use such a big HD as the system drive because if you also store data on it and it crashes you lose everything on it.

Far better to use a smaller (say 120Gb) SSD as your system drive and the 1TB drive as solely for data along with the 3TB hdd for regular backups.

That way if your system drive crashes then at least your data is safe.

.
 
petersmart said:
Personally I would never use such a big HD as the system drive because if you also store data on it and it crashes you lose everything on it.

Far better to use a smaller (say 120Gb) SSD as your system drive and the 1TB drive as solely for data along with the 3TB hdd for regular backups.

That way if your system drive crashes then at least your data is safe.

.
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And if the data drive crashes, your system is safe :shrug:

Whether on one or two drives is immaterial (unless you are trying to optimise disk I/O). A good and regular backup strategy is, however, vital.......
 
arad85 said:
And if the data drive crashes, your system is safe :shrug:

Whether on one or two drives is immaterial (unless you are trying to optimise disk I/O). A good and regular backup strategy is, however, vital.......
Click to expand...

Oddly enough I have never had a total drive failure without a lot of warnings first - and I certainly do keep backups of backups of backups - whenever I download a new set of photos from my camera onto my computer they are backed up to an external drive, to DVDs and onto Skydrive - so at least one set should survive no matter what.

.
 
i run my 840's in raid 1 so i hopefully can avoid the ssd bsod :)
 
petersmart said:
Personally I would never use such a big HD as the system drive because if you also store data on it and it crashes you lose everything on it.

Far better to use a smaller (say 120Gb) SSD as your system drive and the 1TB drive as solely for data along with the 3TB hdd for regular backups.

That way if your system drive crashes then at least your data is safe.

.
Click to expand...

Backups and system images.

willgill said:
i run my 840's in raid 1 so i hopefully can avoid the ssd bsod :)
Click to expand...

?
 
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