Asus breaks through the 2.1TB wall

Let’s face it, 3.0TB internal drives are coming, if not already here.

The problem: Most operating systems are unable to read anything above 2.1TBs.  This has everything to do with the fact that some 25+ years ago, no one expected capacity demand to ever go beyond 2.1TBs in a desktop system.  Well, reality has set in and with drive companies pushing the envelope on aerial density and thus capacity, 3.0TB will be what 2.0TB is today in a matter of months. And in the not so distant future, 3.0TB will be what 1.0TB is today…mainstream. Of course, this has a lot to do with pricing and economies of scale, but there’s no time like the present to prepare for the inevitable future.

One way around the limitation is to use a controller card and utilize the drive as a secondary drive in the desktop, but many system builders want the flexibility to integrate a single 3.0TB to as the boot and storage drive. To accomplish this, there are all kinds of parameters that must be met. Check out Seagate’s Storage Innovations section called Beyond 2TB.

Asus is one company, best known for motherboards, that is diving in head first to provide the capabilities to take advantage of greater than 2.1TBs today. They call their patent pending technology Disk Unlocker.  This free download is designed to take the headache out of integrating drives larger than 2.1TB, and it works with every Asus motherboard. Asus says,“All you have to do is to download it from http://event.asus.com/mb/2010/Disk_Unlocker/ Once installed, it will immediately enable access to hidden space. Disk Unlocker comes with a user-friendly interface and is incredible easy to use.”

Kudos to Asus for developing this technology.  Hopefully other motherboard or chipset manufacturers will license this software and maybe, just maybe, Disk Unlocker will free us all from this 2.1TB limitation.