2TB drive with XP. Help needed quickly

killerk · 29 Jan 2011 at 12:34

Hi all

I am about to rebuild my server and was planning on using xp (for the mean time) however i have had people saying the new 2TB drives i have wont work with XP is this true?

Surveyor · 29 Jan 2011 at 12:40

Which 2TB drives?

How many do you have?

How do you plan on using them? RAID?

killerk · 29 Jan 2011 at 12:45

2xSamsung F4 Ecogreen 2TB
Not to be used in raid or for a boot drive

Surveyor · 29 Jan 2011 at 12:56

If they're just being used for storage then you'll be fine.

I've used WD 2TB drives for storage without problem on XP.

killerk · 29 Jan 2011 at 13:03

Thanks. Saved my wasting 100quid on W7 atm.

wonko · 29 Jan 2011 at 14:00

I can't answer fully for Samsung 2TB drives, as I haven't got any, but have a read up on Advanced Format drives, which I believe the F4 is. They have 4K sectors, which on XP will mean partitions are not properly aligned resulting in a significant hit on write performance.
For XP, there may be a jumper or tools on the sammy site to make the drive emulate a 512 byte sector drive, or tools to align partitions onto 4K boundaries.

hansp · 29 Jan 2011 at 14:01

The problem are drives beyond 2TiB. 32bit XP cannot handle those.

hansp · 29 Jan 2011 at 14:07

wonko said:
I can't answer fully for Samsung 2TB drives, as I haven't got any, but have a read up on Advanced Format drives, which I believe the F4 is. They have 4K sectors, which on XP will mean partitions are not properly aligned resulting in a significant hit on write performance.
For XP, there may be a jumper or tools on the sammy site to make the drive emulate a 512 byte sector drive, or tools to align partitions onto 4K boundaries.

It is actually the drive itself that does the emulation. And it is true that xp needs a little help aligning partitions.

Surveyor · 29 Jan 2011 at 14:23

WD 2TD drives have a jumper to set when using with XP.

wonko · 29 Jan 2011 at 14:27

hansp said:
It is actually the drive itself that does the emulation.

Isn't that what I said? It's what I meant, anyway

hansp · 29 Jan 2011 at 14:45

Surveyor said:
WD 2TD drives have a jumper to set when using with XP.

Note that the jumper only supports one single partition spanning the entire drive. If you need more than one, you need to do it the "proper" way.

wonko said:
Isn't that what I said? It's what I meant, anyway

Okay. I just thought you said the tools did the emulation

killerk · 29 Jan 2011 at 15:30

okay so is it 2tb or beyond 2tb. am i better waiting till i can afford w7

Fourstar · 29 Jan 2011 at 16:20

killerk said:
okay so is it 2tb or beyond 2tb. am i better waiting till i can afford w7

In short, they'll work fine in XP but you'll need to manually format to get full (or maybe decent) performance.

/edit looking at the benchmarks in the link I posted when not aligned you'll see a 2-5 TIMES degradation in performance!

Long answer, there are two factors at play here.

1) Drive size limit.
2.2TB is the limit you'll be able to use which effectively means 2TB as there aren't any 2.2TB drives.

Above this limit the BIOS on you motherboard probably doesn't support, regardless of whether XP does or not.

2) Advanced Format / 4KB sector drives.
This is where all drives are heading and they will work out of the box in XP. Partitions, however, will not be properly aligned and you'll get a big performance hit. Samsung may provide a tool or you'll have to manually format the drives to get full performance.

Here is an intro to AF drives. It deals with Western Digital as they were the first to introduce them but applies equally well to the Samsung Eco f4 drives.
http://hothardware.com/Articles/WDs...vanced-Format-Windows-XP-Users-Pay-Attention/

killerk · 29 Jan 2011 at 16:27

If i format and use the tool will it work without a clean install on w7

hansp · 29 Jan 2011 at 16:42

It will work fine. It is just a strategic way to partition the drive, so it perform the best way possible.

If you use the jumper-metod then you cannot unjump it later without screwing it up.