HGST Z7K500 250GB 60PK 0J26002-60PK User Manual

High-Capacity Hard Drives
While manufacturers begin introducing 

the latest generation of high-capacity 

drives, the industry has been working 

to resolve known capacity addressing 

limitations that date back to original 

design of the PC. These limitations  

are caused by 32-bit definitions used  

for sector size and logical block  

addresses (LBA)

1

. 

Now that hard drives with capacities 

greater than or equal to (≥) 2.2 terabytes 

are available, users will need to implement 

a combination of operating systems, 

BIOS, drive partition tables, and HDD 

drivers that support >2.2TB in order to 

gain trouble-free access to the higher 

capacities offered. When working in 

legacy environments, more effort will  

be required to ensure that all  

components are capable of supporting 

high-capacity drives. 

Check out our on-line tools specifically 

designed to help you understand our 

latest high-capacity products

www.hgst.com/internal-drives/above-2tb

Mac OS X

Technical Note TN2166  

Secrets of the GPT

http://developer.apple.com/librarymac/ 

#technotes/tn2006/tn2166.html

Microsoft

Windows and GPT FAQ

www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/ 

storage/GPT_FAQ.mspx 

Unified Extensible  

Firmware Interface Forum

www.efi.org

Preparing for the Big 4TB

Online tools

Systems Summary
The following table is a summary of 

operating systems support for high-

capacity hard drives. All configurations 

assume that partitioning is done using 

GPT partition tables (rather than MBR)

Microsoft Windows XP (x32)

No

No

Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 or later x32

No

Yes

Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 or later x64

Yes, with EFI

Yes

Microsoft Windows 7 (x32)

No

Yes

Microsoft Windows 7 (x64)

Yes, with EFI

Yes

Intel-based Mac OS X 10.6+

Yes

Yes

Linux UBUNTU 8.04+/SUSE x32, x64

Yes

Yes

1 

32 bit limitation: 512 byte sectors x 2^32 bits = 2.199 TB