Maximum hard drive size allowed in windows 8?

tcman50

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I need to add a hard drive to my computer to allow for more media storage, I see the 3TB drives seem to be a pretty good value over the 2TB ones, my question is : will windows 8 support drives larger than 2TB especially without having to do a lot of work?

Thanks
Terry
 

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i would suggest setting up a RAID, if you are going this route. the physical hardware gets more expensive as you go up in drive size.
 

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According to Windows support for hard disks that are larger than 2 TB you can use larger than 2TB but I think it has to be done on newer computers running the 64-bit version/s of Windows. If thinking of using a second HDD for backup it may not be prudent to use RAID. https://www.google.com/search?site=...9.0....0...1c.1.54.hp..8.8.2533.0.cbeiVyv7_JI

Looks like the answer is 9.4 ZB (9.4 zettabytes, or 9.4 billion terabytes) after running several commands

Edit : If you buy a drive that is over 2
terabytes the manufacturer should supply drivers for it
 
Last edited:

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chances if you buy a HD > 2TB then the HD is already initialized as GPT style HD. You don't need anything extra, just plug in and Windows will recognize it.
 

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As pointed out, you need the GPT partition type to do partitions over 2TB in size. Beyond that, NTFS will support drives well beyond anything we're even close to now. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm reasonably sure there's nothing about GPT that requires a 64-bit OS. It's likely just a mistaken impression people get when they see the message that to install the 64-bit version of Windows on a system with uEFI they need to use GPT partition types.
 

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As pointed out, you need the GPT partition type to do partitions over 2TB in size. Beyond that, NTFS will support drives well beyond anything we're even close to now. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm reasonably sure there's nothing about GPT that requires a 64-bit OS. It's likely just a mistaken impression people get when they see the message that to install the 64-bit version of Windows on a system with uEFI they need to use GPT partition types.
Windows requires a UEFI PC to enable GPT. There exists solutions that merge MBR/GPT partitioning systems under some BIOS, but they are considered unsafe and unreliable by Microsoft...

But you are correct that UEFI itself has been implemented for both 32 bit and 64 bit processors and the OS themselves support that. So, yes AFAIK Windows 8 32 bit supports UEFI and GPT.
 

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