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16TB, did I make a mistake?

Silverbullit
Level 8
Howdy mates,

I would really, really appreciate if you could clarify a few things for me about 16tb harddrives.
Since I have a bazillion old harddrives stuffed with old filmprojects which is a horror to search through I dreamt about a large harddrive that could fit all that old crap. (Filmschool)
So I bit the sour apple and just got a fancy new 16TB Exos harddrive.
Plugged it in and started formatting the drive, quick google to see what cluster size would be optimal turns up that Win 10 only supports hdds up to 16TB.
Up to?
My english is not that optimated either, so does this mean my new lovely dream is to big for my Windows10?

Help here guys, what gives?

My horror origins from when I got harddrives for my old Rampage II Extreme, and each one got corrupted and I lost everything - because I had moronically missed the fact that anything over 2tb was NOT supported on the platform, would perform brilliant until 2tb limit than E V E R Y T H I N G got corrupted beyond help...
(No it was not yesterday, it was a while back)
The nightmares has barely faded out and now with the above google warning I needed to change shorts once again, so any help from the outstanding experts here would be utmost appreciated!

Stay cool, especially your NB's and CPU Core Packages!!!

/Silverbullit
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TooLoud
Level 8
The 16TB limit is for the normal (most common/ default) allocation size of 4K (which should still be supported). Anyway, you can use a larger allocation size from 8K to 2MB (allowing 8 petaBytes). The biggest issue with such large hard drives is that I suspect it's using shingled storage (SMR) which means slower write speeds (not by a massive amount). The drives and type of RAID used all depends on what you're doing. In this PC I have two 4TB drives in RAID0(striping) as speed and capacity are more important than safety/ reliability. Just try not to put all your eggs into one basket.

Just make sure you backup your backups, with important stuff elsewhere.

Out of curiosity, what OS was it that killed your data? I know Windows wouldn't do that is it's destructive (insert unsupported filesystem and it will delete your data, not a feature most would want).

TooLoud wrote:
The 16TB limit is for the normal (most common/ default) allocation size of 4K (which should still be supported). Anyway, you can use a larger allocation size from 8K to 2MB (allowing 8 petaBytes). The biggest issue with such large hard drives is that I suspect it's using shingled storage (SMR) which means slower write speeds (not by a massive amount). The drives and type of RAID used all depends on what you're doing. In this PC I have two 4TB drives in RAID0(striping) as speed and capacity are more important than safety/ reliability. Just try not to put all your eggs into one basket.

Followed Win10 diskmanagers default suggestion (4k) and I hope the disk will not corrupt everything when it reaches filled state. Drive speed is 263MB/s so not too shabby. Had a history of bad experiences with RAID with failed re-builds loosing everything entrusted to RAID which is a main reason I dreamt of a big drive that I did not have to use raid on. Nope the Exos 16TB is definitely not shingled (SMR) and it was the biggest drive I found that I could confirm was NOT SMR. (Ironwolf had same size drives however that was a bigger question whether the versions was SMR mixed)
Well I bought the basket, so I guess I'll don't have any choice but to put the eggs in if I want to use it? And thats the dream, all the small crappy hdds ranging from 320gb and up all in one place, so I can have all stuff collected in one place for mostly editing. (well at least the s-pile of small ones :))


TooLoud wrote:
Just make sure you backup your backups, with important stuff elsewhere.
Honestly took a loooong time to save up for this huge disk...

TooLoud wrote:
Out of curiosity, what OS was it that killed your data? I know Windows wouldn't do that is it's destructive (insert unsupported filesystem and it will delete your data, not a feature most would want).

What killed my data was not so much the OS but my motherboard, Asus ROG Rampage II Extreme (October 2008) thus having pre UEFI bios, just oldschool BIOS (1502) The operative was Win7 Pro and as far as I understand not at any part to blame? (Pre UEFI supports max hdd size apparantly 2TB despite vain attempts with GPT format and pci-e s-ata controllercard.)



Some of my concerns still maintains as the flong new Exos 16TB refuses to show values in HD Sentinel or other software, in HWINFO64 I s o m e t i m e s get a second reading of Drive Airflow Temperature, and a handfull few times HWINFO64 booted in with both Drive Airflow Temperature AND Drive Temperature. Is this signs of trouble with the new Exos hdd or is the latest technology on a diet? Is it suppose to do this?

Thanks for your input mate, I value it greatly!