What happens if a drive is larger than it's controller can handle?

[blownsi]

Just scored a deal on a used 6tb drive but my external enclosure is only rated to 5tb. Will it only "see" 5tb or not read it at all?

 

Drive: HUS726060ALA640

Enclosure: Newertech MiniStack

[prot]

Just scored a deal on a used 6tb drive but my external enclosure is only rated to 5tb. Will it only "see" 5tb or not read it at all?

 

Drive: HUS726060ALA640

Enclosure: Newertech MiniStack

 

Good question. Unfortunatelly the only generic & correct answer is "undefined". You'll have to try, chances that you'll damage anything by trying are extremely low.

That 5GB limitation on your enclosure sounds quite arbitrary, I'd say your chances are pretty good (i.e. somewhat better than 50-50)

[Harpy]

Wouldn't it be up to the computer if you used the eSATA port? I agree with prot that it may be arbitrary.

[Jabs1542]

Just scored a deal on a used 6tb drive but my external enclosure is only rated to 5tb. Will it only "see" 5tb or not read it at all?

 

Drive: HUS726060ALA640

Enclosure: Newertech MiniStack

 

It seems if it can recognize the drive at all you are 90% there, at that point the worst you would have is only 5 of the 6 available TB. However it is doubtful that the 5TB limit is due to the addressable space of the controller, the limitation was most likely due to the physical size of the drives at that time versus the box. My guess is that you'll get all 6TB.

[baddog]

Just scored a deal on a used 6tb drive but my external enclosure is only rated to 5tb. Will it only "see" 5tb or not read it at all?

 

Drive: HUS726060ALA640

Enclosure: Newertech MiniStack

 

You will either see all of it or none of it.

 

I would call vendor or OWC to see if there is support beyond 5 TB and/or a firmware upgrade for the controller available.

 

Otherwise $25 buys you a USB 3.0 dock that works with HD's of size 6TB + ( I own two, they work great! One of which is in fact using a WD 6 TB drive).

 

Toaster anyone?

Barr

[robertlan]

Just scored a deal on a used 6tb drive but my external enclosure is only rated to 5tb. Will it only "see" 5tb or not read it at all?

 

Drive: HUS726060ALA640

Enclosure: Newertech MiniStack

 

I use two 4-bay Mediasonic Probox HF2-SU3S2 enclosures for music backup. At the time I bought them, they were spec'd to work with just about any 3.5" drives up to 4TB. The other day, I emailed Mediasonic asking whether 6TB drives would be compatible with my enclosures, and they said the HF2-SU3S2 worked fine with drives up to 6TB without any need for firmware upgrade. So I went ahead and tried a WD Green 6TB drive in one of them and it works perfectly. So I'll eventually get more of those 6TB drives and be done for a while with a couple of 24TB enclosures for music backup.

 

Next step will be to try a pair of 6TB drives in my WD Thunderbolt Duo.

 

I'd say just try it in your Newertech enclosure.

 

Robert

[Boris75]

[h=2]What happens if a drive is larger than it's controller can handle?[/h]

 

It's happened to me many times. I tried various drivers or pieces of software to avoid buying new cases, but it never worked out and always ended up costing me a lot of time. The upshot is that I would recommend that you buy a new case that is rated for the capacity of your hard drive. That will cost you a bit but save you lots of time and frustration reformatting, dealing with unrecognised partitions etc.

[Audio_ELF]

Just scored a deal on a used 6tb drive but my external enclosure is only rated to 5tb. Will it only "see" 5tb or not read it at all?

If you already have the enclosure, just try the drive and see if the whole capacity is recognised. You are not going to damage the drive.

 

If it doesn't work ... buy a new enclosure.

[rwwjr44]

I had a similar problem with an OWC drive and had to download an Intel disk manager (I don't know which and can't get to my computer right now). Assuming you have an Intel based computer.