Drives Bigger than 2TB. WHEN?

As I understand, if, say a 4TB HD did exist, there's nothing stopping users making 2 equal sized partitions for 32bit OSes - or a 1TB NTFS boot partition and 3TB GPT data partition under 64bit.
If you partition a >2TB volume as an MBR volume to allow booting then it's limited to 2Tb, any space beyond that is inaccessible.

The MBR/GPT choice is set at the volume level, not at the partition level and hence can't be mixed on a single disk.
 
It's a mix of hardware and software. A standard BIOS can only boot an MBR volume, all versions of Windows and Linux (except the Itanium specific versions) can only boot using a standard BIOS.
 
One thing to note however, is that we currently don't have any 2TB drives. Once they do become available, why wouldn't Microsoft simply release some form of patch that allows all the space on the drive to be accessible? If the problem is within the BIOS itself, then surely Motherboard manufacturers need only release a new BIOS that allows drives greater than 2TB to be recognised in the BIOS?

I remember in the past, whenever we make a leap in hard disk size that breaches the capabilities of existing software/hardware, a simple patch solves the problem.

On a side-note, it's nice to see the correct use of grammar - rpstewart's correct use of the word 'except', was nice to see, as a lot of people mix up the words 'except' with 'accept' and 'your' with 'you're'...it really irritates me when I see these words interchanged.
 
If you partition a >2TB volume as an MBR volume to allow booting then it's limited to 2Tb, any space beyond that is inaccessible.

The MBR/GPT choice is set at the volume level, not at the partition level and hence can't be mixed on a single disk.

Above is correct. GPT can be bootable but in specific cases. In a normal machine its not going to happen for a while.

The need for over 2TB on one disk must be pretty limited at the moment. Just RAID them if you need more. I have just built a RAID5 of 5x1.5TB drives. Quite impressive to see that large number but it means Windows has a different array to boot from. Great for a server, irritating for at home. 2TB is LOADS for home users really. For now anyway :)

The 'patching' idea wont' work as there is a limit of 2TB on MBR. There is no patch for 32bit systems to take more RAM! Well except PAE. Motherboards need to be updated to GPT for >2TB HDDs

http://www.buildorbuy.org/bioslimits.html has some more info on it!
 
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It'll be funny looking back on that in ten years...

I bet ten years ago, it was "Who'd be mad enough to make a boot volume larger than 2MB anyway?
Not quite that low, my Amiga's Workbench partition in 1996 was 15MB :)

But I don't know if it's just me, my boot drive has hovered around the 100GB mark for the last five years - plenty for OS / programs and ~10 big-ish games. Data drives I admit, have exploded in capacity/needs.

If you partition a >2TB volume as an MBR volume to allow booting then it's limited to 2Tb, any space beyond that is inaccessible.

The MBR/GPT choice is set at the volume level, not at the partition level and hence can't be mixed on a single disk.
That's a shame, but not a disaster - Booting on SSD technology should be economically viable by the time they start appearing in 3 / 4TB sizes. Failing that a small pair of HDs in RAID0 is a better choice than one lump of capacity for boot/data imho. Eggs in one basket and all that!
 
Definitely not. Your Hard Disk will not be the bottle neck. The 5400rpm hard disk almost certainly has a faster transfer rate than a Blu Ray disk reader/recorder/player.

Your ethernet (RJ45) cable/hub/system will probably be your bottleneck.

As an example, I stream 720p material from my lounge to my bedroom PC via ethernet cable. 720p runs fine. 1080p sometimes, stutters. Bear in mind that the bottleneck here is my router.

Something is wrong there mate. 10/100 is plenty for 1080p here. What are you streaming from/to? mkvs? ts? iso?
 
Something is wrong there mate. 10/100 is plenty for 1080p here. What are you streaming from/to? mkvs? ts? iso?

MKV.

When I first put everything together, I didn't used to get any stutter. However, as time progressed something "broke". And now, I can only view 720p without stutter, while 1080p does stutter. This doesnt bother me though, as I am happy to stream 720p material. If I were desperate to view 1080p over the network, then I would simply copy the entire file over to my network PC, from the Server.
 
I run Windows Vista 64 and use an Intel 64 bit CPU/motherboard.
Just to clarify, would I be correct in assuming the following:

1. I have a single 3TB drive; I can boot from it, however only 2TB will be usable in Windows?
2. I have a 500GB boot drive and a 3TB secondary drive; the 3TB drive will be fully usable in Windows.
 
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I run Windows Vista 64 and use an Intel 64 bit CPU/motherboard.
Just to clarify, would I be correct in assuming the following:

1. I have a single 3TB drive; I can boot from it, however only 2TB will be usable in Windows?
Yes, the drive will appear to the system to be a 2Tb drive.
2. I have a 500GB boot drive and a 3TB secondary drive; the 3TB drive will be fully usable in Windows.
Yep
 
I run Windows Vista 64 and use an Intel 64 bit CPU/motherboard.
Just to clarify, would I be correct in assuming the following:

1. I have a single 3TB drive; I can boot from it, however only 2TB will be usable in Windows?
2. I have a 500GB boot drive and a 3TB secondary drive; the 3TB drive will be fully usable in Windows.

That should be correct. Assuming Vista will allow the 3TB disk to be converted to a GPT disk. Server 2003 x64 does it and I assume that 2008 can do it as well. Vista must be able to, let us all have hope!
 
In which case, there isnt much of a problem.

... my boot drive has hovered around the 100GB mark for the last five years - plenty for OS / programs and ~10 big-ish games.

I'm the same.

Slap in a 500GB hard disk as your boot drive and have 3TB (and larger) drives as your media drives, which although wont be recognised for their full size, at bootup, will be recognised (for their full size) in windows, which for most people, is what counts.

I dont see large hard disks as being a problem.
 
just to confirm, i have to use one of my 5 drives as a boot drive as i it would be recognised by the raid controller as a 3.72TB array (5 1tb drives in raid 5) but would only allow me to format 2tb of it while it was bootable (many tools i tried before i knew what was limiting me), turned off bootable and would let me play with it all, but couldnt boot :/. Solved by 1 drive as bootable other 4 in raid 5 giving 2.76TB which raid controller and windows instantly recognise fine, had to format in gpt to be able to use it though.

Side note: It told me xp machines couldnt read GPT formatted drives, yet on my network there are two of my mates machiens with xp 32 bit (pro corp) and they can both read it perfectly fine? I guess its because its assing through my vista 64 machine?
 
It can be overcome but the only way to boot a GPT volume (as opposed to an MBR one) is to use EFI rather than a BIOS boot. At the minute the only machines that can do this are Intel Macs and Itanium based machines.

It's a huge leap from where we are now to the ability to boot >2Tb volumes - new hardware, new OS, the whole nine yards.

Doesn't Vista support EFI? So when motherboards start supporting it there should be no problems?
 
Not sure its really the OS that is the problem. Its mostly hardware, for now anyway. I am sure MS will come up with an issue!

For now, no booting from >2TB. But I can't see that being needed for a LONG while.
 
and the fact that id have liked to ahve all my drives in my array, giving me my os on my raid. instead i have to have it on a single drive, which also means i have 850gb (other partition) of space that isnt on a raid array :(
 
But havent Western Digital already released a 2TB drive? If so, the problem is already here.

That drive isn't actually the full 2TB. It is >2TB that causes the problem. Also, there is no need for a Windows drive of 2TB at the moment. You need a few hundred for that. 2TB drives are for storage. Never needed for a 'normal' Windows disk.
 
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