I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop from around 2006/2007 running Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate SP1 with 2GB (maxed out) RAM. Works great!

I am looking to purchase a new external backup drive and my question is how can I know whether or not the laptop's bios and hardware can handle a 2,3 or 4TB drive? Those are the three sizes I am deciding between. The most important consideration is that I don't want to buy a drive that my system can't handle, of course.

I know that some large drives can be used with special driver software even if the system they are on doesn't natively support them. My strong preference would be to use the external drive without any special driver software needed if that is possible. So I really would like to avoid that solution if I can.

I'm currently using a 1TB external backup drive with no problems, but it's time to retire that one and I would like to get a larger drive ONLY IF my laptop system can support it. But how can I be sure?

I can post detailed specs about bios and motherboard, etc. if that will help... just tell me which ones you need.

Thanks for any expert help here!