3Tb hard drives : compatability questions

[1101]

Just a few general questions about 3Tb hard drives (I dont have one to try myself)
I know I would need GPT (& UEFI , AHCI ?) for it to be bootable in Win7,8 ,10 etc

But as a 2nd/data drive ?
Ive read that the motherboard needs a 4K compatible Sata chip/controller . Is that true in the real world ? Seems to be conflicting info .
I remember reading something about some HD's having a compatablity fix/mode built into the drives firmware itself (?)

Also, is it possible to clone from a smaller NTFS HD to a 3TB GPT HD & still have it bootable ? assuming AHCI was enabled in bios with the old HD ?

[dugimodo]

As a data drive you can just format NTFS and use as normal, as long as the BIOS supports it and most do. There are workarounds as well, a friend of mine has a 3TB in an old core 2 Duo machine and we got it going as a boot drive with some software from the Seagate website even though technically it's not supported by his BIOS. Pretty sure you can just partition it to avoid using GPT as well. I can't help with the cloning question.

[BBCmicro]

I would have thought 4k issues (4096 bytes per sector vs 512) were long dead and buried. Unless you're referring to some other "4k" issue

Back then (about 5 years ago?) the fix for WD "Advanced Format" drives was a bit of "alignment" software. But I never had a problem myself