Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Thanks for not answering my question. LOL
You can be an ass more.
I would expect that most external enclosures would be able to take all manner of SATA HDDs. Just mount it in and go for it. The reason why there was mention of GPT and such is so you can address partitions larger than 2TB, of which there are no individual drives that can do so.
If you're looking for RAID functionality (like RAID 0) look for RAID enclosures.
Does that answer your question now?
Thanks for the help, but no, it doesn't. Do you know of an external enclosure that supports drives larger than 1.5TB?
GPT, etc... isn't the problem. I'm well aware of all of those facts. Everyone so far has assumed what I did or didn't know about large drives and partitions.
I'd like to find an enclosure that I know supports something larger than 1.5TB so I don't have to go out and buy yet another enclosure when I upgrade again.
I would venture to say most all "dumb" enclosures arent limited to a particular drive size. If you go with something like a DROBO ( technically not an external drive, but still) you may have to look at the manufacturers specs. My external cases only act as an interface for the drive to talk to the PC and as a power supply to the drive. It doesnt matter if I use a 20gig, or 1,5 TB drive, the enclosure doesnt care.
What you MAY have problems with is your operating system seeing that much drive. I believe anything 32 bit can handle up to 2 TB , and not sure about 64 bit OS's.
This is what I personally have http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145027 and http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337
Note that enclosure is NOT actively cooled, which is ok for me, as I use it once a week for about 20 minutes. I would not recommend that particular one for a 24/7 ON deal. Or you could add a 60mm fan like I did for active cooling.
What you MAY have problems with is your operating system seeing that much drive. I believe anything 32 bit can handle up to 2 TB , and not sure about 64 bit OS's.
Have you had a problem with the WD20EADS in any particular enclosure? I wouldn't think the sole 2TB drive in the market today would be having problems with third-party aftermarket external enclosures than other drives.
Bassman, ( note, this is forum experience speaking not RL experience) I believe from what I have read the reason a lot of these external drives say "Will support XXX Gig drive" is because at the time they were made/sold/marketed ( the enclosures) the XXX Gig drive was the largest at the time. That seems to be the standard way of them doing it. And given the way things are in the PC world, I can understand, I would hate to make a product, then claim it will support some future standard only to find out the next gen form factor has changed, etc. Also, given the 2Tb is pretty new, it may take a while for some better feedback than what I can give, I was >< close to buying one yesterday but got another 1.5 instead.
DougLite said:48 bit LBA is good for 144 petabytes within a single drive. 48-bit LBA has been the standard for some time now (years) The previous LBA level, 28-bit, has long been replaced, as it only allowed 137GB drives.
Well I'm sorry if this wasn't clear in my first post, but I did say that any host/enclosure in recent memory would not be a problem with a >2TB drive.