3tb GPT compatibility with Windows Home Server. Help!

[Shooty*]

Hi all,
I have a server running Windows Home Server (v1, not 2011). It has 3 x 2tb hard drives in it, with a 1tb OS drive/ smaller amount of storage.

So far so good. It runs fine, and I'm happy with it.

I back it up on spare hard drives. I have a hot swap SATA CD-bay thing into which I put "naked" (i.e. no enclosure) hard drives. These then appear as a NON-storage volume (i.e. a separate drive letter), and I sync the contents of certain folders with the back up drive. Each back up drive is used to back up certain folers on the server.

Again, so far so good. However, I had 5 1tb drives as the back ups. I sold them. I want to get one of the Seagate 3tb hard drives which are going for about £100 on Scan. You'll appreciate that if I get 2 of them, it's a lot less to lug around than 5 1tb drives!

However, I note that formatting the drives to full 3tb capacity required GPT. That should be OK: I'll format them on my Windows 7 64-bit rig.

The question is: will WHS recogise the 3tb GPT formatted drive when I put it in the hot swap port, and will it allow me to use the full capacity, or will it say either "Whoa, GPT? Don't recognise that. FAIL!" or "I'll let you copy 2tb over, but nothing over that".

Anyone got any experience?

(Short question: will a 3tb drive work with WHS v1 as a non-storage, non-boot drive?)

[jim]

AFAIK, it's actually possible to make them work as a duplicated WHS storage drive (albeit with a lot of unsupported faffing around), so as a non-added drive shouldn't be a problem at all.

Since it's based on Server 2003, which supports GPT drives, it should read them fine. The problem comes in when you want to use it for the storage system, and demigrator.exe etc starts to kick up a fuss.

In fact, the more I think about it, I'm fairly sure that I backup my WHS onto 3TB drives on a hotswap basis.

[Shooty*]

You, sir, continue to be a legend.

I've bought one. Will let you know.

[Shooty*]

Yeah, it works. All good.