Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
 ·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| Curious about WinXP 2TB+ limit
I currently use 4 500GB drives and was wondering after reading another thread about this...
I have installed Windows XP Home Edition 32-bit and the motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P (ICH9R Chipset). So the absolute limit is 2TB and there is no easy way around it if I wanted to add a 1TB hard drive? I do not currently utilize RAID if that matters. I do not fully understand what Volume Sets or GPT partitions is except that the home edition of Windows does not have/support it.
I'm frankly just want an answer on how to get past the 2TB limit people have been mentioning. This is something new to me.
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Anime / F@H |
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Pyrion
Liquid Metal Nanomorph
join:2001-12-01
Poway, CA
clubs: | I think the 2TB limit is per volume, not total. |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs: | reply to Vathral
Thats what I don't understand. What does it mean by volume? |
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sechs
Premium
join:2001-07-19
Left Coast | Read "volume" as "partition." |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| reply to Vathral
So I should be fine adding a 1TB hard drive and Windows should recognize more than 2TB?
Just can't have more than 2TB in a RAID?
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Anime / F@H |
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sechs
Premium
join:2001-07-19
Left Coast
 ·AT&T Yahoo
·Astound Broadband
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| The limit is to MBR. It can't create a partition larger than 2TB and can't create a volume beyond the 2TB mark (provided that you're using 512b sectors).
This is to say that you'd need a storage device greater than 2TB to run into this problem.
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It's not what you know but who you know... |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| reply to Vathral
That's what everyone says but it still doesn't help my confusion. I did not change anything when I installed XP and did a normal format of the hard drives.
Will I be fine having more than 2TB of space? This is on XP Home 32-bit. L
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Anime / F@H |
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aurgathor
join:2002-12-01
Lynnwood, WA | One can easily have a 2TB C:, D:, E:, .. Z: for a grand total of 48TB -- that should be enough for a little while. |
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gallowsroad
join:2004-08-09
Tulsa, OK
| reply to Vathral
I run XP Home, and currently have 3.25TB of total hard drive space (less that that formatted, but still well over 2TB), spread across five physical drives.
The limitation involves the size of a single volume or partition. This would mean, if they ever come out with 3TB single drives, you couldn't use it. Similarly, you cannot run RAID volumes larger than 2TB. You would have to run several RAID volumes of 2TB or less to get around the limit.
But I can tell you that you can have more than 2TB total storage. I have 3 750GB drives and 2 500GB drives, and there is a new drive in my near future that will raise the total over 4TB.
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Ha ha haaaaaaa....ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
- John Lydon, last Sex Pistols show |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| said by gallowsroad  :I run XP Home, and currently have 3.25TB of total hard drive space (less that that formatted, but still well over 2TB), spread across five physical drives. The limitation involves the size of a single volume or partition. This would mean, if they ever come out with 3TB single drives, you couldn't use it. Similarly, you cannot run RAID volumes larger than 2TB. You would have to run several RAID volumes of 2TB or less to get around the limit. But I can tell you that you can have more than 2TB total storage. I have 3 750GB drives and 2 500GB drives, and there is a new drive in my near future that will raise the total over 4TB. Thats perfect! I still have 3 SATA ports unused, yuum. I feel better knowing I can go ahead and get up to 3 more 1TB drives.
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Anime / F@H |
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gallowsroad
join:2004-08-09
Tulsa, OK | I'm about to add a 1TB drive since prices are coming down and the 1.5TB drives are being announced, meaning prices ought to fall further.
Which drive(s) are you looking at? |
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Vathral
Premium
join:2002-08-26
New York, NY
clubs:
·Earthlink Cable Mo..
| reply to Vathral
»www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a···22152102
I currently have 5 of the 500gb drives that were discontinued and no problems at all with them for 12-15 months now.
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gallowsroad
join:2004-08-09
Tulsa, OK
| That's the one I'm looking at as well. I've bought mostly Seagates in the past for the warranty (I actually use the drives long enough for the 5 years to be of use to me), but I've been working hard to quiet down my computer lately, and hard drives are now the loudest components since getting a quiet heat sink, using quieter fans and having a passively cooled graphics card.
I've read the Samsung is slightly less noisy than the other 1TB offerings, the price is good, and they have a rep for running cooler than Seagates. The one Samsung I do have (250GB SATA3.0) doesn't seem any quieter than my current model Seagates, but it does run about 6C cooler, and less heat means I can keep the fans spinning slower, hence less noise. It's a very good drive, though I did have to RMA it shortly after I got it - the connector on it was deformed, so cables would literally fall off, even the ones with spring clips. It eventually just snapped right off, and I am gentle on my gear.
The replacement has been perfect for nearly three years.
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Ha ha haaaaaaa....ever get the feeling you've been cheated?
- John Lydon, last Sex Pistols show |
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