Seagate ships 3TB Barracuda XT internal hard drive that plays nice with software that makes it possible to bypass the 2TB limit of Windows PCs running older BIOS.Barracuda XT ships with Seagate’s DiscWizard software that makes it easy to configure the OS to enable full 3TB capacity support……..
Hard disk manufacturer Seagate has started shipping its 3TB Barracuda XT internal hard disk drive (HDD) that can work with Windows XP and legacy PC BIOS, which had been said to be incompatible with the largest Terabyte capacity hard disk drives.Maybe it was the Millennium bug, but the IT industry had been awash with claims that HDDs above 2.1TB could not be used by most of yesterday’s older PC BIOS and obsolescent Windows computers.However Seagate’s 3.5-inch, 7200RPM 3TB Barracuda XT overcomes that glitch with software called Discwizard that allows a user to configure the computer operating system for a 3TB HDD. Discwizard can be downloaded for free from Seagate’s website.
On top of that, Windows computers that use BIOS (basic input/output system)-based motherboards which are the majority of computers on the market, can’t boot from a volume that’s larger than 2.19TB, either, because of the limitation of BIOS protocols. While this problem can be solved in the near future by replacing MBR with GUID Partition Table and BIOS with the new Extensible Firmware Interface, there are still many existing computers, especially those that run Windows XP, that would miss out on the top storage capacity. Unless they use the new Barracuda XT, that is.Seagate said, “The Barracuda XT hard drive combines a 64MB cache and Serial ATA 6Gb/s – an interface that delivers the highest system throughput – to enable the highest performance available in a desktop hard drive. The 3.5-inch, 7200RPM drive’s 3TB of storage capacity gives desktop PC users the most space ever available for videos, games, photos and files.”
Seagate claims that its new DiscWizard software allows you to use the new 3TB drive’s entire capacity, even when the hard drive is used as a bootable main drive. Once the OS has been installed on the new hard drive on a partition that the OS can recognize, which is smaller than 3TB, you can install DiscWizard which includes special drivers that allow the OS to recognize the rest of the hard drive’s capacity and turn that into a second partition.In other words, you will be able to use the 3TB Barracuda XT with Windows XP, as a main hard drive, in two separate partitions that total 3TB, but not as a single 3TB volume. While this is not a perfect solution, it’s a good one, considering that Western Digital‘s 3TB hard drive requires an add-in card and still can only work as a secondary hard drive in a computer. When used with EFI and Windows Vista/7 64-bit version, the 3TB Barracuda XT will function like a normal 3TB hard drive.Barracuda XT hard drive sports a 64MB cache, uses the top-tier Serial ATA 6Gbps interface, and spins at 7,200rpm. It’s designed for high-end desktop gaming and storage-intensive computers. The hard drive is available now and comes with a five-year warranty. It’s slated to cost $279.
Sources :theinquirer.net,news.cnet.com
Good luck trying to get windows 7 64 bit OS to recognize this 3TB drive. it does not. Gave up with it.