Would a terabyte be terrible?
May 28, 2010 12:19 PM Subscribe
Am I limited as to the capacity of a second hard drive to be added to my PC?
I am close to reaching the storage capacity of the hard drive on my Dell Dimension E521. According to the specs listed by Dell, "The Dimension E521 supports up to two hard drives, each with up to 320GB45 space - a potential capacity of 640GB7." Adding a second drive, from what I've seen in some quick research, is as simple as popping it into the bay waiting for it, plugging in the waiting SATA power cable, and connecting to the mother board with a SATA data cable.
I see SATA internal hard drives for sale with capacities of a terabyte and beyond. If I'm limited here to a 320 GB drive, fine, so be it, that's probably more than enough storage, but I'm just curious what would happen if I popped a terabyte drive in there.
Any other advice about how to proceed would be most welcome also.
I am close to reaching the storage capacity of the hard drive on my Dell Dimension E521. According to the specs listed by Dell, "The Dimension E521 supports up to two hard drives, each with up to 320GB45 space - a potential capacity of 640GB7." Adding a second drive, from what I've seen in some quick research, is as simple as popping it into the bay waiting for it, plugging in the waiting SATA power cable, and connecting to the mother board with a SATA data cable.
I see SATA internal hard drives for sale with capacities of a terabyte and beyond. If I'm limited here to a 320 GB drive, fine, so be it, that's probably more than enough storage, but I'm just curious what would happen if I popped a terabyte drive in there.
Any other advice about how to proceed would be most welcome also.
One limiting factor could be your BIOS. The last update for the BIOS on that model was 2007-09-04. I don't think anything bad would happen. When I've installed a too-large drive on machines before, I have only experienced A) the drive not being recognized. B) the full size of the drive not being recognized.
posted by adipocere at 12:38 PM on May 28, 2010
posted by adipocere at 12:38 PM on May 28, 2010
Adipocere, would a machine that is modern enough to make use of SATA (as opposed to IDE) have a BIOS that is so limiting? This is an area where my knowledge is lacking. I know BIOS is a factor. What about FAT32 versus NTSF?
posted by Gainesvillain at 1:08 PM on May 28, 2010
posted by Gainesvillain at 1:08 PM on May 28, 2010
The specs you found are definitely for the Dell options that were available for that model, not a hard drive size limitation. Long time ago, there used to be a 128GB limit because of disk addressing mode issues, but if the Dell specs say it supports 640GB hard drives, then that problem does not exist on your PC. If you like, you can read more about this limitation here and here.
You should be able to get any 1TB or even 2TB 3.5" SATA drive and stick it in there. If you don't want to mess with the PC for some reason, you can also buy an external hard drive that connects via USB. That might be better if you'd like that data to be portable.
posted by thewildgreen at 1:20 PM on May 28, 2010
You should be able to get any 1TB or even 2TB 3.5" SATA drive and stick it in there. If you don't want to mess with the PC for some reason, you can also buy an external hard drive that connects via USB. That might be better if you'd like that data to be portable.
posted by thewildgreen at 1:20 PM on May 28, 2010
I have learned never to doubt the random limitations of the BIOS or the OS. Windows XP, why limit it to 128GB? They had to know it was coming — the progress was reasonably smooth. They had to make a fix for it anyway. Similarly, I've had to flash the BIOS to enable all kinds of things, including, once, a reasonably-sized hard drive.
If the E521 was made in late 2005, drives would have been, what, around 200GB average then? Limiting at 320GB in the BIOS could be plausible. I've seen some fairly crappy design decisions in Dells.
You could always get a USB enclosure with your big drive purchase, then go USB if you can't swing it the other way. Hedge your bets.
posted by adipocere at 1:25 PM on May 28, 2010
If the E521 was made in late 2005, drives would have been, what, around 200GB average then? Limiting at 320GB in the BIOS could be plausible. I've seen some fairly crappy design decisions in Dells.
You could always get a USB enclosure with your big drive purchase, then go USB if you can't swing it the other way. Hedge your bets.
posted by adipocere at 1:25 PM on May 28, 2010
"Windows XP, why limit it to 128GB?"
It's not to be mean, it's because 48bit LBA wasn't ready yet. It was fixed with the first service pack, I believe.
posted by gjc at 2:15 PM on May 28, 2010
It's not to be mean, it's because 48bit LBA wasn't ready yet. It was fixed with the first service pack, I believe.
posted by gjc at 2:15 PM on May 28, 2010
Best answer: "Limiting at 320GB in the BIOS could be plausible."
I have never heard of a 320GB or other artificial limits enforced by any BIOS. Win XP was limited to 128GB (or 137.4 GB) because 48-bit LBA was not available when that OS came out. It was added in Win XP SP1. All subsequent OSes have that built-in. Also, many older BIOSes did not support 48-bit LBA. But, most PC manufacturers released BIOS updates that added this feature. 48-bit LBA supports up to 144 petabytes, so I think we'll be okay for a while.
The bottom line is this: in this specific case, because Dell specs advertise support for 640GB drives for this PC, it is clear that both the BIOS and the OS support 48-bit LBA, so no need to worry about getting terabyte hard drives.
posted by thewildgreen at 2:39 PM on May 28, 2010
I have never heard of a 320GB or other artificial limits enforced by any BIOS. Win XP was limited to 128GB (or 137.4 GB) because 48-bit LBA was not available when that OS came out. It was added in Win XP SP1. All subsequent OSes have that built-in. Also, many older BIOSes did not support 48-bit LBA. But, most PC manufacturers released BIOS updates that added this feature. 48-bit LBA supports up to 144 petabytes, so I think we'll be okay for a while.
The bottom line is this: in this specific case, because Dell specs advertise support for 640GB drives for this PC, it is clear that both the BIOS and the OS support 48-bit LBA, so no need to worry about getting terabyte hard drives.
posted by thewildgreen at 2:39 PM on May 28, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Likely those are the sizes of the hard drives they would sell pre-installed, and the literature reflects that, go ahead and purchase the 1TB drive.
posted by oblio_one at 12:34 PM on May 28, 2010