![]() ![]() Since most current systems don’t yet support UEFI standards, WD is providing an interim solution for those who want to boot these high-capacity drives in certain operating environments they’re including an AHCI-compliant host bus adapter (HBA) card with the retail drive kits. Also a requirement is a 64-bit operating system. While some UEFI capable systems are already shipping, the industry is probably looking toward mid-2011 for full adoption for Windows-based machines (OSX is already there). To solve this problem, the industry is moving to GUID Partition Tables (GPT) instead of MBR partition tables through organization by UEFI, which is "a community effort by many companies in the computer industry to modernize the booting process." Moving to GPT partitions allows for up to 18 Exabyte (2 64) of Logical Block Addressing, thereby breaking through the current bottleneck. To be able to boot from a drive larger than 2.19TB, the BIOS and system drivers need to agree on capacity and layout of the hard drive to boot and operate properly. Because of a combination between legacy BIOS and support only booting from a MBR (Master Boot Record) partition formatted drive, there are limitations when attempting to move to a higher capacity drive. With a drive sector size of 512 bytes, you arrive at the 2.19TB cap. Windows and some Linux variants hit the 2.19TB capacity limit because they can only address 2 32 logical blocks (OSX is not affected by this limitation). WD is banking on consumers working around this barrier, while we collectively wait for software and hardware to catch up, supporting larger drives natively.īefore we get too far along, it’s worth clarifying the 2.19 problem. As it stands, one of the largest impediments to high-capacity internal drives is the 2.19TB barrier. Doing so gives consumers the option to have access to large capacity drives, but limits their utility by leaving them outside of the system. ![]() To this point, 3TB drives have been limited to external enclosures. We’ll dive into these potential compatibility issues and take a look a performance numbers in this review. While the high capacity is surely a blessing to many users, there are certain risks WD is taking by going to market right now. Other drive highlights include a 64MB buffer, 3Gb/s SATA interface and quoted standby power consumption of only 1W. In addition to the 3TB model (WD30EZRSDTL) there’s also a 2.5TB (WD25EZRSDTL) capacity available. WD accomplishes this feat by leveraging Advanced Format and four 750GB platters. Of course the major highlight this time around is the monster 3TB capacity, a first for internal 3.5" hard drives. Western Digital has both announced and started shipping their 5th generation Caviar Green hard drive. ![]()
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