Bob Squires Jr
1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Here is a little something that, if you are not aware of already, you should be, regarding 3 TB (and larger) hard drives.
They are big, they are fast and they run cool. (I have 2 Hitachis)
Formatting them for use generally requires a 64 Bit OS or a formatting tool that will provide creating a GUID partition.
(It will look like a 750 GB drive if you don't)
Once partitioned & formatted out to 3 TB, the drive can be used on a 64 bit system perfectly.
So... I tried it on a 32 Bit OS (Win 7 32) and lo and behold, it copies, reads etc. just fine.
BUT! And this is a HUGE but!!!
I copied everything I owned to the 3 TB drive.
Just under 2 TB.
It read and wrote fine under 32 bit.
I wasn't thinking... If I would have thought about it, I would have continued under 64 Bit ONLY!
But NOOOOO! I stayed on the 32 Bit system.
All of a sudden, as I was adding to the drive, it quit with an "invalid drive" error.
So I went to delete what I copied and tried to start over.
No go...
So I rebooted.
The drive wasn't there.
I bring up Admin tools and lo and behold... the drive completely de-partitioned itself and
I lost everything I owned. YUP! 7 years of collecting Quad stuff down the toilet.
POOF, Gone, Unrecoverable.
I thought the disc was shot but what happened is that 32 bit systems can see the full 3 TB but cannot write to all of it.
Once I wrote beyond the 32 bit 2 TB disc size limit, it over-wrote the partition table thus blanking the drive
permanently.
No, I did not have a backup... I was filling the disc before I made a dupe to another 3 TB backup.
(like an ass, I should have matched it as I was going!)
Thanks to friends, I will be able to piece most of my stuff back together.
The purpose of this message?
If you have one of these monsters... format and write in 64 bit only.
If you must access it in 32 Bit... READ ONLY!!!!
If you hit that limit and overwrite the partition table... you are royally screwed!
And no... your data recovery programs do not work... I tried.
Just a bit of worthless info.
Don't be a tool like me, back up your stuff and don't screw with these drives unless you know what you are doing.
I know what I'm doing and I f-ed up because I got cocky.
Better yet to have two 2 TB drives if you are straight 32 bit.
I lost everything but may get most of it back.
What I won't get back was 5 weeks of DVD-A & SACD to BDA conversions I did that no one has copies of
so I have to re-do them all over again.
So far I have like 35 of my 60 or so, not counting all the copying I'll have to do to re-compile my collection.
What a pain in the ass!
-Bob
They are big, they are fast and they run cool. (I have 2 Hitachis)
Formatting them for use generally requires a 64 Bit OS or a formatting tool that will provide creating a GUID partition.
(It will look like a 750 GB drive if you don't)
Once partitioned & formatted out to 3 TB, the drive can be used on a 64 bit system perfectly.
So... I tried it on a 32 Bit OS (Win 7 32) and lo and behold, it copies, reads etc. just fine.
BUT! And this is a HUGE but!!!
I copied everything I owned to the 3 TB drive.
Just under 2 TB.
It read and wrote fine under 32 bit.
I wasn't thinking... If I would have thought about it, I would have continued under 64 Bit ONLY!
But NOOOOO! I stayed on the 32 Bit system.
All of a sudden, as I was adding to the drive, it quit with an "invalid drive" error.
So I went to delete what I copied and tried to start over.
No go...
So I rebooted.
The drive wasn't there.
I bring up Admin tools and lo and behold... the drive completely de-partitioned itself and
I lost everything I owned. YUP! 7 years of collecting Quad stuff down the toilet.
POOF, Gone, Unrecoverable.
I thought the disc was shot but what happened is that 32 bit systems can see the full 3 TB but cannot write to all of it.
Once I wrote beyond the 32 bit 2 TB disc size limit, it over-wrote the partition table thus blanking the drive
permanently.
No, I did not have a backup... I was filling the disc before I made a dupe to another 3 TB backup.
(like an ass, I should have matched it as I was going!)
Thanks to friends, I will be able to piece most of my stuff back together.
The purpose of this message?
If you have one of these monsters... format and write in 64 bit only.
If you must access it in 32 Bit... READ ONLY!!!!
If you hit that limit and overwrite the partition table... you are royally screwed!
And no... your data recovery programs do not work... I tried.
Just a bit of worthless info.
Don't be a tool like me, back up your stuff and don't screw with these drives unless you know what you are doing.
I know what I'm doing and I f-ed up because I got cocky.
Better yet to have two 2 TB drives if you are straight 32 bit.
I lost everything but may get most of it back.
What I won't get back was 5 weeks of DVD-A & SACD to BDA conversions I did that no one has copies of
so I have to re-do them all over again.
So far I have like 35 of my 60 or so, not counting all the copying I'll have to do to re-compile my collection.
What a pain in the ass!
-Bob
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