External HD compatibility??

I bought this external HD to use to store my photos. I am a photographer, so I have lots of DVDs and CDs stored, and I'd like to have a better way to keep them organized. I understand that it is a plug and play device that can run as a RAID 1 HD at 500gbs of mirrored storage. This is great, if it works that way!

I was about to open it up and hook it up to my new lap top and desktop when I read a thread talking about large HDs not being recognized by the internal mother board. I can't find the thread, so that doesn't help either!

Anyways, is there anyway to see if my new laptop and old desktop are compatible with this new HD?

External http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=270

Laptop http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8119822&st=HP+6125&type=product&id=1158319080012

And, my desktop has the ancient mother board P4 Titan series 8SQ800. Not sure that helps. Of course, I might be over thinking this, and I have nothing to worry about!

Thanks for the help.

Kevin

 

That will work with that laptop. You might want to get a USB hub, as that will take all your USB ports. It should be fine, it should come formated as NTFS in the RAID 1 configuration so that XP can see the full 500 GB. There shouldn't be an issue with the motherboard not supporting it.

 

Thanks Matt.

 

Agreed. Kevin, your computer (even your old one) should recognize the external HD. Just follow the instructions that the external HD gives you, and your computer should install the software automatically if you have Windows XP.

Just a sidenote - when you actually format/reformat/repartition the external HD, make sure you format it in NTFS form. FAT32 has partition limits and blah blah and it's a nightmare to store large files. NTFS for the win.