I purchased a 4TB external drive, cheaper than an internal drive, and initialized it as GPT connected via USB 3, stressed it for a few days before busting it out of its enclosure and voiding the warranty, added some random test data, scanned the surface, ok, all was well, removed it from the enclosure, installed in server, went straight to disc manager, was prompted to re-initialize the drive as GPT, I think I had to reformat too, all test data is now gone.
Question, my server dies; I don’t think I can just plug this drive in to any windows PC (Vista, 7 or 8), to read the data? I didn’t think to check the drive in my computer prior to going into disc management, maybe the data was there and readable, prior to initializing and formatting.
side note, I'm loving the space a 4TB offers, I was going to get a 3TB red drive, but I was replacing an aging 2TB drive and needed more space, and it just was not worth the cost to gain 1 TB with the WD Red, and the 4TB HGST Touro I purchased had the following drive inside, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145563, which is fine by me, some claim to have received the 7200 RPM model, but I was happy with the cool spin, all my other drives are LP Seagates.
I purchased this drive, the egg had it for $170, shell shocker, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145596