20th July 2015, 8:01 PM
My hard drive was starting to read slowly, and it took me about an hour to figure out that it was a good sign my drive was getting ready to fail. I've finally upgraded it to a 4 TB HDD. I did run into a problem there. My drive hadn't failed, so I didn't have issues copying the partition over. However, I've learned that the old MBR partition tables have a hard limit of only being able to store information for 2 TB of data. So, I wouldn't be able to expand that partition to fill the whole disk. The newer GUID partition table has a FAR higher limit, but it's only compatible with the newer UEFI firmware standard (which has replaced BIOS for PCs). I'm not at a point where I can afford to upgrade my entire PC just yet, but I eventually found I could put the boot loader for Windows 7 on my secondary 1 TB drive (which uses MBR). This gets the boot process far enough along for the OS to take over for the BIOS, and Windows 7 does in fact support GUID just fine, so then it switches over and I can boot just fine. The whole transfer process took over a day (as I said, the old drive was failing) but all's well with the world now.
One thing I can say for sure is that recent Seagate drives are failing more often than they have in the past. I'd go with either Western Digital or HGST (owned by Western Digital) for more reliable hard disk drives at this point. HGST especially has very high reliability and very good prices.
One thing I can say for sure is that recent Seagate drives are failing more often than they have in the past. I'd go with either Western Digital or HGST (owned by Western Digital) for more reliable hard disk drives at this point. HGST especially has very high reliability and very good prices.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)