Seagate Confirms 3TB drive in 2010

[RebateMonger]

*doh*
yea you are right... the things I listed are required to boot windows from it, not to use it as storage. oops.

Hehe...it gets complicated, doesn't it? This stuff will be "common knowledge" in a year, but many of us Windows users are new to UEFI and GPT.

 

[tommo123]

taltamir **shakes fist**

running win7 x64 here so - yay! 🙂

 

[yinan]

UEFI seems to be a PITA. I have to use it on server systems at work and it is SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. Takes a server like 20 minutes to boot.

 

[Nothinman]

If you're not going to run a 64bit version of Windows, are you really going to use a UEFI motherboard? 32bit users are legacy users; they're using older hardware that doesn't support UEFI.

32-bit vs 64-bit is a redherring, EFI support isn't in any way dependent on architecture or bit width. Motherboard manufacturers could easily release firmware containing EFI instead of a legacy BIOS. How far back they go is up to them, but the fact that they haven't been doing it at all is MS' fault for not supporting it. As much as it sucks, MS is still a major influence on what hardware manufacturers do and support.

UEFI seems to be a PITA. I have to use it on server systems at work and it is SLOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. Takes a server like 20 minutes to boot.

UEFI shouldn't be at fault for long bootup times, that's just how it's always been. I have a Mac in our lab running Linux and EFI+rEFIt only takes as long as a legacy BIOS to POST and start booting.

 

[ViRGE]

32-bit vs 64-bit is a redherring, EFI support isn't in any way dependent on architecture or bit width.

Well yes and no. If Apple is anything to go by, EFI can get messy when it comes to 32bit/64bit matters. There's a great deal of teeth gnashing to be had about EFI32 systems being unable to run EFI64 hardware, unable to run the 64bit version of Snow Leopard, etc. Given the issues they had with only a small product line, I suspect the only way you could make new EFI deployments work is if you went EFI64.

Which in turn brings us back to the 64bit OS thing. If you're MS and you limit EFI booting to 64bit systems, you force vendors to go EFI64 and we all get to skip the gnashing. Plus that's one less thing you have to validate on the 32bit version of Windows, which is going to be great in 2017 when 32bit systems will be all but dead.

Motherboard manufacturers could easily release firmware containing EFI instead of a legacy BIOS. How far back they go is up to them, but the fact that they haven't been doing it at all is MS' fault for not supporting it. As much as it sucks, MS is still a major influence on what hardware manufacturers do and support.

MS has supported it. If you're a mobo manufacturer you have been able to use EFI64 ever since Vista (not counting BIOS emulation).

 

[Nothinman]

Which in turn brings us back to the 64bit OS thing. If you're MS and you limit EFI booting to 64bit systems, you force vendors to go EFI64 and we all get to skip the gnashing. Plus that's one less thing you have to validate on the 32bit version of Windows, which is going to be great in 2017 when 32bit systems will be all but dead.

Ah so in 7 years Windows users will finally get use all of the neat stuff that Linux and OS X users have now? Nice.

MS has supported it. If you're a mobo manufacturer you have been able to use EFI64 ever since Vista (not counting BIOS emulation).

Supporting it only in the 64-bit releases and still releasing a 32-bit SKU that doesn't support it is a pretty halfhearted how do ya do. UEFI may be pretty new, but EFI has been around for 10 years. There's no excuse for MS not supporting it everywhere now.

 

[ViRGE]

Ah so in 7 years Windows users will finally get use all of the neat stuff that Linux and OS X users have now? Nice.

Eh?

Supporting it only in the 64-bit releases and still releasing a 32-bit SKU that doesn't support it is a pretty halfhearted how do ya do. UEFI may be pretty new, but EFI has been around for 10 years. There's no excuse for MS not supporting it everywhere now.

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. There's no sense in putting it in the 32bit version - the outcome (no one uses EFI until they absolutely have to) is unchanged regardless. In fact I'd argue that having EFI support in 32bit Windows would cause more problems than it would solve by making the BIOS->EFI transition that much more awkward. As it stands MS fully supports it on the only OS that matters: 64bit Windows.

 

[Oric]

Do media players such as Western Digital Media Player (with Linux derivatives) support > 2TB ? Is this 32 bit OS limitation good for windows or for all ?

 

[taltamir]

32-bit vs 64-bit is a redherring, EFI support isn't in any way dependent on architecture or bit width.

64bit is an MS arbitrary decision for consumer grade windows, but I wouldn't say its a redherring..
Windows server can boot from it regardless of 32bit or 64bit... linux can boot from it regardless of 32bit vs 64bit.
windows vista SP1 and windows 7 are limited to 64bit only due to an arbitrary decision by MS rather then a hardware limitation.

 

[RebateMonger]

n.m.

 

[Nothinman]

Eh?
I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree. There's no sense in putting it in the 32bit version - the outcome (no one uses EFI until they absolutely have to) is unchanged regardless. In fact I'd argue that having EFI support in 32bit Windows would cause more problems than it would solve by making the BIOS->EFI transition that much more awkward. As it stands MS fully supports it on the only OS that matters: 64bit Windows.

So this is just one more reason that MS should've not shipped a 32-bit release of Win7. And really, the effort to remove it from the 32-bit version is likely greater than leaving it in so I don't get the point.

windows vista SP1 and windows 7 are limited to 64bit only due to an arbitrary decision by MS rather then a hardware limitation.

Exactly, yet another arbitrary limitation placed on users by MS because they obviously know better.

 

[taltamir]

its obviously product differentiation.
so you want UEFI / GPT booting from a 32bit OS? well, you have to buy the server edition then.

 

[RebateMonger]

Anybody else think it's strange that, according to the "Thinq" article, Seagate will be announcing an ENTERPRISE disk greater than 2.1 TB by the end of the year? I don't believe that Seagate sells any ES (Enterprise SATA) disks larger than 1.0 TB right now. Probably for good reason.

I guess Seagate is counting on the enhanced ECC that comes with 4KB sectors to reduce the uncorrectable errors to an acceptable value. Supposedly the new ECC reduces those errors by a factor of 100.

 

[Idontcare]

RebateMonger, personally I find it more interesting that for some reason Seagate spammed all the usual media re-spamming sites (TheINQ, toms, etc) with a press release regarding something as mundane as "yet another capacity increase in spindle-drives is forthcoming"...I really I had no idea such was considered news any more.

And its not even a product launch, just a press release stating a product launch may or may not happen 6 months from now. Thanks Seagate for having my back 🙄

 

[taltamir]

RebateMonger, personally I find it more interesting that for some reason Seagate spammed all the usual media re-spamming sites (TheINQ, toms, etc) with a press release regarding something as mundane as "yet another capacity increase in spindle-drives is forthcoming"...I really I had no idea such was considered news any more.

And its not even a product launch, just a press release stating a product launch may or may not happen 6 months from now. Thanks Seagate for having my back 🙄

ha... so true...
Its like when I see an article titled "fastest ever RAM yet" or "biggest harddrive ever" or "biggest ram stick ever"... guess what, those happen every 6-18 months and have been for decades... every time you slightly increase capacity or speed it becomes "fastest / largest ever"

 

[RebateMonger]

Well, 3 TB IS a pretty big deal. It's 50% bigger than anything else and will eventually change the way that PC motherboards boot. That second item is pretty major.

 

[AdamK47]

so make C: \Games a mount point for the new, bigger volume.

Had I known how easy this was I would have done it a long time ago.

I bought a 50GB OCZ Vertex 2 and Acronis True Image 2010. I frst copied everything out of C: \Games on the original 2TB array to a 1TB SpinPoint F1 and a 1.5TB 7200.11. This left ~40GB left on the array. I then installed the Vertex 2 and cloned the array over to the SSD using Acronis. I had another 1TB SpinPoint F3 that I couldn't use since MBR has that 2TB limitation. I put that drive in along with the other two I had. Created the 3TB array and made the SSD the boot drive. It booted into Windows 7 amazingly fast. The 3TB array was identified by Windows disk management and I was able to select GUID as a disk initialization option. Formated the whole 3TB as one partition and then mounted it to the blank C: \Games on the SSD. I was then able to copy the games off of the two backup drives into the newly mounted C: \Games directory. Everything went perfectly smooth.

So, to stay slightly on topic, this may be an option for a 3TB drive. Get an SSD and use the drive as a mount point. The best of both worlds.