WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN and XP support

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

So, I still have a computer with Windows XP.

XP has a limitation of 2TB. I have two 4TB drives (WDBFJK0040HBK-NESN) that have the Advance Format technology where the enclosure reports back 4K sectors to Windows XP rather than 512 bytes. This allows me to use both of these drive on Windows XP.

Here’s the question. Does the new model (WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN) also have this Advance Format technology built into it? Does it report back 4K sector size for Windows XP?

2

Hello,

Not sure if they are reporting 4K sectors as I haven’t check. Let’s see if any of the users can share some information about it.

3

I did get a response from WD directly. This is what Henry said.

We would like to inform you the drive i,e. WD 4TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive - USB 3.0 -(WDBBGB0040HBK-NESN) is a USB drive and is pre-formatted in exFAT for out-of-the-box compatibility with Windows and Mac PCs. You can use the quick formatting tool to make it work with Windows XP.

And coming to 4K sector reporting, you just need to run msinfo32 on your Windows XP and then need to go to storage and disks. There you will be able to see the reported bytes per sector.

I went ahead and did a followup on whether there are other drives larger than 4TB that do this reporting. I wouldn’t mind a drive larger than 4TB if its not too much of a difference from the 4TB cost. I have too many little drives and need to consolidate.

Hopefully, they have higher ones with the same support built in. Anything with high rating and high reviews from Amazon is usually what I roll with. I just need to know the specific model number on the box to make sure I match the exact product.