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Hitachi Deskstar 3TB Hard Drives
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is there a limit of 2.2TB 1 on certain systems?
If you think back to when the PC was introduced, you will remember that capacity points were in the
megabytes. Nobody dreamed that capacity points would ever reach 3TB or even 1TB. With that,
some of the basic design decisions made in the original computer architecture left the industry with
inherent limitations. One of those limitations is the ability to address hard drives that exceed
capacities of 2.199TB, or approximately 2.2TB.
This limitation is caused by 32bit definitions, which have been used for partition sizes and logical
block addresses (LBAs) since the 1980s, and affects the BIOS, the partition table, the operating
system and drivers. These 32 bits are used to describe the size of a hard drive, which is made up of
512byte sectors, resulting in 2.2TB being the largest size addressable with 32 bits (512byte sectors
x 2^32 = 2.199TB).
2. Is this a Hitachi GST issue or an industrywide issue?
This is an industrywide issue that affects all manufacturers delivering hard drive solutions greater
than 2.2TB.
3. What do customers need to take advantage of the full capacity of the 3TB Deskstar drive?
In order to take advantage of hard drives over 2.2TB, users must have some combination of a
compatible operating system, BIOS, partition table, and file system. Combinations will vary
depending on whether the customer will use the drive as a data drive or a boot drive.
4. What systems can recognize 2.2TBs and above?
It depends on whether the user will use the hard drive as a data drive or a boot drive. A data drive
requires an OS that supports long LBA addressing such as Windows