USB 3.0 external hard drive 3+ TB GPT NTFS

I am aiming to get a USB 3.0 external hard drive of at least 3 TB to be formatted as a single user-data partition using the GPT organisation and NTFS, and to have it visible by Windows 10 and by Windows 7 (actually WS2008R2 SP1).

Searching gives a number of views. One of these is that it will work in Windows 7 but not in Windows 10 (although this problem may perhaps have been fixed for more recent Editions of Windows 10?).

Please could someone tell me the actual situation from their personal experience? I don't want to spend around £100 for (say) a 4 TB drive and find it won't work without using MBR and two NTFS partitions... Thanks!

Thank you! You are, of course, correct about MBR supporting a max of ~2.2 TB, however partitioned, for a 512-byte NTFS cluster size.

I'm afraid you rather skipped over my point about the opinion that "it will work in Windows 7 but not in Windows 10 (although this problem may perhaps have been fixed for more recent Editions of Windows 10?)."
Can you say from personal experience that a 3 TB or 4 TB GPT/NTFS drive works in Windows 10?

Brilliant! Thanks!

Hi there
@JohnGray

the 4TB passport size self powered pocket sized USB3 drives are brilliant (work on USB2 as well but slower speed of course).

I have several of these - usually use on Linux but they work 100% on W10 so long as you format these as GPT drives with NTFS file system. On Linux no prob just format with command mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdx or mkfs.xfs /sdx where sdx is the device mount).

Here's a link to UK purchase - that price includes a wallet busting 20% tax (VAT) !!!!!! - how those people don't burn down buckingham palace or parliament with that sort of tax --another story though !! in USA ,outside UK or elsewhere you should be able to source these things a lot cheaper.

Here's that link for the standard Black ones -- they have different coloured ones which is great if you use different HDD's for various bits of data. I've had absolutely no failure on these and I have used them a lot.

WD 4 TB My Passport Portable Hard Drive - Black: Amazon.co.uk: Computers Accessories

I got mine from Amazon S.A.R.L (Luxembourg) without VAT - but we're treading into dangerous waters here on that topic !!!!

Performance is almost as good as typical internal HDD's as far as file transfer speeds are concerned - regularly get over 5GHZ wifi network average transfer speeds of around 87 MB/s (X 4 for Mb/s of course). perfectly acceptable in my view.

For standard HDD's used say in an enclosure same is true - but I prefer the portable HDD's for this as they are easily switchable between systems and if you travel you don't want to take an electric powered multi-bay external enclosure !!!! - remember 2 of these portable HDD's will give you 8TB of data --unless you are the CIA you don't need that much data on the road with a small laptop !!!!!!.

For permanently attaching to some sort of server (or semi-permanently) then the enclosure with internal HDD's is a good idea of course.

Cheers
jimbo

@jimbo45 Thanks for the link - they were the drives I was looking at.

With regard to VAT, almost all countries I know of have some form of sales tax under different names. It is just another way in which governments collect money from the populace.