Which external enclosures (or SATAtoUSB adapters) support 2TB HDDs?

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giollarnat

138 posts

Master Geek

#86424 6-Jul-2011 16:45

I'm just looking to use a 2TB Seagate HDD as an external drive via USB, but many of the enclosures either specify "up to 800GB" or similar or don't specify a number...

What is it that determines whether an external enclosure will support a 2TB drive? The Sata controller?

Alternatively, there are really cheap SATAtoUSB adapters on trademe - anyone tried these with a 2TB drive?

Cheers.

michaelt

425 posts

Ultimate Geek

#490157 6-Jul-2011 16:55

I have both a cheap USB to SATA adaptor and a cheap enclosure off trademe, but I've never tried either with a drive that large.

If you're in Auckland you're free to come over and test either one. Happy to sell one of them to you as well.

richms

28168 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#491070 8-Jul-2011 13:31

All that I have tried were fine on the old 2TB drive, I have not tried an advanced format one on either of the USB bridges that I have here tho.

3TB is where I expect to see the problems come up.

Richard rich.ms

giollarnat

138 posts

Master Geek

#491084 8-Jul-2011 13:55

funny just got a reply from 2 different trade me guys selling the same product (link in first post) and one of them says it definitely won't cope with 2tb and the other says it's fine...

webwat

2036 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#491504 9-Jul-2011 20:12

There should be no problems with the size of the drive, the main problem is how its formatted. If there is a problem, I think reformatting would probably detect that it just needs a bigger cluster size or something similar. Otherwise there might be a limit on the size of each partition, but no reason why you couldnt use 2 partitions (ie partition it as 2 drives in the "Disk Management" screen).

Time to find a new industry!