What hard drives are compatible with OSX Snow Leopard Boot Camp?

Question

Recently when the video card in my desktop Mac died, I decided to make some upgrades, one of them being the hard drive. After doing some research, I fixed on the Western Digital 3TB Caviar Green 3.5-Inch and had it installed at the same time as the new video card. I installed OS 10.6.8, opened up Boot Camp Assistant, set the partition sizes: 2.5 TB for my Mac side and 500 GB for the Windows. XP wouldn't install so I ordered Windows 7 and began trying to set up the Windows partition. Each time I tried, I got the same error -- Windows 7 couldn't install on the 500 GB partition since it was formatted GPT which was strange since when I looked at the partition inside of Disk Utility, it said NTFS. While troubleshooting, I came across the following:
・Mac users should know that WD's new drives do not support Boot Camp, therefore they cannot be used as a dual-boot hard drive.
・The MBR part of the hybrid partition table cannot work with 3TB hard drives. MBR is limited to 2TB.
・In a 32-bit MBR world, a disk larger than 2TB is probably invalid, and different OS's and tools react wildly differently when this is forced beyond 2TB.
I called Western Digital to confirm which of their drives were in fact compatible with Boot Camp and they replied since Boot Camp was a third-party application, they have no information on compatibility. They told me to call Apple to get the information. Before purchasing a new drive and sending back the 3TB WD, I want to be sure I know which specs to look for in a hard drive in deciding whether it is compatible with my machine. Any helpful advice or a point in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
Here are the specs for my Mac:
2006 24" iMac 6,1 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
OS 10.6.8
Boot Camp Assistant 3.0.4

Answer 1

Thanks for responding to my question. I guess I'm not sure I understand your reply though. I had no problem installing OS X on the 3TB WD Caviar Green and WD assured me that if I wanted to install only Windows 7 on it, there would be no compatibility issues. The problem lies with wanting the drive to be dual-bootable I guess via using Boot Camp (I know of no other way to go about it). The tech at OWC (where I bought the drive) said he had never heard of any problems with being able to install both Mac and Windows OS on the drive. In fact, he gave the same reply as yours: most hard drives should be able to work perfectly fine with your Mac. It's just that I can't get XP or Windows 7 (32 bit or 64 bit) to install on the 2nd partition, making the drive I have now not dual-bootable. The tech said 2TB hard drives were different and should solve the problem but when I asked him for any discernible spec I could look for in shopping for a replacement drive, he couldn't give me one, i.e. most drives should be okay. I have paid to have the 3TB installed and will have to pay to get the drive taken out and a replacement put back in -- I want to make sure whatever drive I put in this time allows me to have 2 partitions: one for my Mac OSX system and the other for my Windows enviroment (either XP or Windows 7).
If there is a work-around not involving Boot Camp, please let me know. I thought the reason for using Boot Camp as opposed to Disk Utility to create the dual-bootable drive was the benefit of using Mac drivers on the Windows side.
If there is another way, I don't understand why PC world made this blanket statement:
"Mac users should know that WD's new drives do not support Boot Camp, therefore they cannot be used as a dual-boot hard drive."