question about external enclosure max capacity

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bpimmerman

[H]ard|Gawd
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Dec 5, 2001
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I haven't posted in a long time, and i've been using a macbook, so i'm pretty out of the loop on most things. I need to upgrade the HD, get two external enclosures (one 2.5" for the old HD as a spare, and one 3.5" to put a backup into), and one 3.5" drive to serve as a backup and movie store.

I was looking at newegg at the vantec nst-360SU, which looks to be a solid case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392002

but I would want to get a 750gb now, and have a potential to upgrade as sizes increase over the next few years. However, the case says that it supports drives up to 500gb. Is this true? how can a case determine what size HD you put in?

As for 3.5" HD, i was just going to get the cheapest 750gb with a five year warrenty (brand name of course).

I have another 3.5" samsung 200gb lying around that i might get a third enclosure for as well.

Any other recommendations for cases (or HDs that you love) would be welcome, I did a search but couldn't find much.

Thanks!
 
ilovellamafood said:
It is true. If it is rated 750gb, if you put in a 1tb drive then it will only recognize 750gb.
Click to expand...

That's the first time I've heard that asserted. I think the issue has more to do with recognizing >128GiB disks; this is a limitation with drives that use 28-bit LBA addressing. Since each block is 512 bytes, and the largest integer representable in 28 bits is 256 * 1024 * 1024, the maximum size this scheme can deal with is 512*256*1024*1024 = 128 GiB. Newer controllers use 48-bit LBA, which means the limit is 2**48 ~= 256 trillion bytes. I don't know of a limitation that would keep that enclosure from reading drives that are 750 as opposed to 500 GB.
 
It will most likely work with the 1TB drive. I've seen this before with external enclosure manufacturers. They won't SAY that they work with a larger drive because they haven't tested it with that capacity. It's just not prudent to say their enclosures work with drives that haven't been produced at the time they built and tested their products. I'd say give it a go.
 
Thanks, sorry for the long break - finals. Anyone put a 1tb into one of these cases? Or a case that is only spec'd for a 750gb?
 
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