Windows XP TB Limit?

[theprophet]

I heard that there is a limit to the size of HDD that you can have on XP. What is the limit? I heard there is a way to have more space on it? I currently have 3 2TB drives on Win 7 but would like to head back to XP since I have been having problems with 7.

Is there a program I have to run to get the Hdds on XP? thoughts Solutions?

[Sosseres]

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-5400-ntfs-partition-size-limit-for-windows-xp

Probably has the answer. Basically, there isn't really a limit if you use the x64 version of xp, you never mentioned which xp version you would be using.

[bork]

There are several things that can limit the maximum size your computer can use and it is not just a OS problem.

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

[x5ga]

I'll assume that you will switch to WinXP SP3, 32bit version, and that the partitions will be NTFS. The maximum size a disk can have there is not so limited (It is theoretically limited at 2^32-1 clusters, which with a default cluster size of 4Kb would be ~16TB, and with a 64Kb cluster size would be ~256TB). 48bit LBA addressing is enabled by default (since XP SP1), so the 137GB barrier does not exist anymore. If you would need >256TB partitions, you will either have to further increase the cluster size, to switch to a 64-bit OS, to make dynamic disks, or to format the disks using GPT instead of MBR (which will also require switching to a 64-bit OS, either Vista SP1, Server 2008 or Win7, -not XP-, since there is no 32bit support for GPT, and maybe a hardware upgrade if yours doesn't support EFI). Keep in mind that we are talking about partitions here, the actual disks can be of a greater size, but you'd have to make more than 1 partition to be able to access the entire storage capacity. These would be the limits NTFS enforces. But... the NTFS with a MBR ("the usual NTFS") has other limits enforced by the MBR: since MBR relies on the BIOS and the BIOS relies on technology from the era of the i8088 microprocessor (that is "a long long time ago"), the limits MBR has are much lower than 256TB or even 16TB - more precisely, exactly 2TiB (2 * 2^40 bytes) which is a little bit more than 2TB (2*10^12 bytes), the size of your disks. So, your 2TB disks will work fine.

tl;dr version: You'd have no problems with 3 2TB drives under WinXP SP1 or greater.

[Freedom Kira]

I do remember something about the boot disk having to be under a certain size though. Like 1TB or something. But for storage, no problem. IIRC anyway.

[newy]

Boot is only able to handle 2 TB ("Master Boot"-something)

[costi]

MBR to be exact (Master Boot Record). However, MBR has nothing to do with disk capacity - it simply tells the system where to find boot information. This does not mean that you can't use a HDD that is larger than 2TB - all it means is that the boot partition needs to be below the 2TB limit (counting from the beginning of the HDD).

[theprophet]

XP pro Svc3 32bit is what I am going to be running, currently in the computer is a 300gig drive which is the Windows and program drive, and then 3 2TB drive all for video storage.

Currently running Win 7 Home 32bit, I was only running it because of the drive size but have been having several playback problems that I am thinking is OS related. On the longer videos the videos have a bad habit of freezing, and either locking up or suddenly shooting back forward to where the video would be before it froze and vid and audio would be out of sync. I don't seem to have problems running the 30 minute episodes of anime, but if I watch movies or anything over an hour it seems to have problems. I have an after market heat sink on processor, not over clocking at all, and plenty of circulation of air in the case. Thought it might have been over heating at first..

All codecs are current, running MPC, with CCCP codec pack, Dual core 3.0 ghz AMD, 2 gig ram, onboard video http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138146,

System only used to playback movies no programs used other that the OS running.

[NaRu]

Right now the Bios is the bottle neck for the harddrive. Bios cant see anything bigger then 2TB drives.

[theprophet]

Well I'm not using bigger than 2TB drives, I was told there was a problem with xp not recognizing the 2TB drives don't wanna break them up into seperate partitions. Will 64 bit version of XP get rid of this problem?

[rathoriel]

I'll assume that you will switch to WinXP SP3, 32bit version, and that the partitions will be NTFS. The maximum size a disk can have there is not so limited (It is theoretically limited at 2^32-1 clusters, which with a default cluster size of 4Kb would be ~16TB, and with a 64Kb cluster size would be ~256TB). 48bit LBA addressing is enabled by default (since XP SP1), so the 137GB barrier does not exist anymore. If you would need >256TB partitions, you will either have to further increase the cluster size, to switch to a 64-bit OS, to make dynamic disks, or to format the disks using GPT instead of MBR (which will also require switching to a 64-bit OS, either Vista SP1, Server 2008 or Win7, -not XP-, since there is no 32bit support for GPT, and maybe a hardware upgrade if yours doesn't support EFI). Keep in mind that we are talking about partitions here, the actual disks can be of a greater size, but you'd have to make more than 1 partition to be able to access the entire storage capacity. These would be the limits NTFS enforces. But... the NTFS with a MBR ("the usual NTFS") has other limits enforced by the MBR: since MBR relies on the BIOS and the BIOS relies on technology from the era of the i8088 microprocessor (that is "a long long time ago"), the limits MBR has are much lower than 256TB or even 16TB - more precisely, exactly 2TiB (2 * 2^40 bytes) which is a little bit more than 2TB (2*10^12 bytes), the size of your disks. So, your 2TB disks will work fine.

tl;dr version: You'd have no problems with 3 2TB drives under WinXP SP1 or greater.

The answer was solved here. Use WinXP SP1 or greater

Edit-
For your playback issue in windows 7 are you sure all of your drivers are up to date?
if you are using the HDMI there was a driver update june 2010
also make sure the radeon drivers are up to date

[costi]

Right now the Bios is the bottle neck for the harddrive. Bios cant see anything bigger then 2TB drives.

Why would it not see drives larger than 2TB, if 48-bit addressing ends way beyond that?

[x5ga]

Right now the Bios is the bottle neck for the harddrive. Bios cant see anything bigger then 2TB drives.

Why would it not see drives larger than 2TB, if 48-bit addressing ends way beyond that?

Logical Block Addressing refers to the scheme which is used to locate the data on the hard disk, it is used by both MBR (BIOS-dependent) and GPT (mostly EFI-dependent) formatted drives. In the BIOS, both the partition length and the partition start address are stored as 32-bit quantities. The sector size is 512bytes, (= 2^9). So, this means that neither the maximum size of a partition nor the maximum start address (both in bytes) can be greater than 2^32 * 2^9 = 2^41 bytes = 2 * 2^40 bytes = 2 TiB. So, nothing can be addressed beyond the 2TiB limit because the outdated BIOS design prevents it. This will probably be one of the most important reasons to drop the BIOS-based architecture and switch to EFI. I have heard of some BIOS + GPT + Hard Disks >2TiB systems, but I haven't tested this, and it only works in windows 7/server 2008/vista SP1.

tl;dr version: it's because the BIOS technology is old and outdated, and not even 48bit LBA can rejuvenate it.

[costi]

Since when does BIOS see partitions on a HDD?

[TorturdChaos]

Way I have read it Windows XP can't work with anything over 2TB.  So say you have Raid setup with 4TB of space - you would have to partition it in 1/2 to get Windows to read it.

[sdedalus83]

Some BIOS are capable of reading greater than 2TB drives, but the vast majority aren't.