Next jump in drive storage announced

Seagate just announced their first 3TB drive for release later this year. However, in order to be able to use the whole space on the drive, a couple of hardware and software upgrades will have to happen, as the currently used MBR (Master Boot Record) on PCs can only address up to 2TB of data.

The replacement will be the GPT (GUID Partition Table), which is supported by newer versions of Windows, as well as Mac OS X and Linux. Most notably Windows XP does not support it. To make matters worse, most motherboards with a regular BIOS cannot boot from a drive partitioned with GPT, so that new boards that support EFI firmware may be necessary. This “Extensible Firmware Interface” as defined by Intel is, however, a rarity in today’s marketplace. The most notable PC manufacturer of EFI machines is… Apple.

Of course, it is probably safe to say that there will be plenty of bugs found in various BIOSes, drivers, and storage device firmwares, so being an early adopter of any drives with a capacity in excess of 2TB will be an adventure, to say the least. Fasten your seatbelt, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

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Jennifer Bell

Marketing Manager at The Data Rescue Center
Jennifer is the Marketing Manager for Prosoft Engineering, Inc. and The Data Rescue Center (Award-Winning Data Recovery Service). She handles both Prosoft and The Data Rescue Center's marketing, advertising as well as all social media channels. Jennifer also handles all media relations and product reviews for our award-winning products. Jennifer began working in high tech in 1996 at UMAX Computers when the first Mac clones were released. Since that time she has worked for Integrated Micro Solutions, BMC Software, WildPackets, T-Mobile and has been with Prosoft since 2004.