3TB drive access from XP over a network

[mscotgrove]

I had added a 3TB RAID, NTFS to my Vista Buisness , SP1(32) system. I
have set the attributes to share in the same way I have on a 500GB
drive in the Vista machine.

My problem is that I would like to access the drive from XP systems
over my network. I can do this with the 500GB drive, but although I
can see the Raid, I always get 'Acces is denied'

Is it possible to access a drive > 2TB over an XP network, or do I a
permissions problem.

Michael

 

[calypso]

I had added a 3TB RAID, NTFS to my Vista Buisness , SP1(32) system. I
have set the attributes to share in the same way I have on a 500GB
drive in the Vista machine.

My problem is that I would like to access the drive from XP systems
over my network. I can do this with the 500GB drive, but although I
can see the Raid, I always get 'Acces is denied'

Is it possible to access a drive > 2TB over an XP network, or do I a
permissions problem.

Hmmmm, I had problems with XP Disk Manager and >2TB drives in XP... Google
for this, it should be well documented...

--
Ispod mosta gumaa slusa suncokretov naradndzau bombardiru
popodne ? By runf

Damir Lukic, calypso@_MAKNIOVO_fly.srk.fer.hr
http://inovator.blog.hr
http://calypso-innovations.blogspot.com/

 

[mscotgrove]

Hmmmm, I had problems with XP Disk Manager and >2TB drives in XP... Google
for this, it should be well documented...

--
Ispod mosta gumaa slusa suncokretov naradndzau bombardiru
popodne ?  By runf

                                  DamirLukic, calypso@_MAKNIOVO_fly.srk.fer.hr
                                 http://inovator.blog.hr
                                 http://calypso-innovations.blogspot.com/

More than 2TB as a directly attached drive in XP is a problem. ie
there is a 2TB limit as this is where the sector count reaches 4G.

My question is if the same limit applies to a network drive? Access
is on a file basis, and not a sector basis

Michael

 

[Yousuf Khan]

More than 2TB as a directly attached drive in XP is a problem. ie
there is a 2TB limit as this is where the sector count reaches 4G.

My question is if the same limit applies to a network drive? Access
is on a file basis, and not a sector basis

There is still a sector basis even over the network. It's not
necessarily directly related to the physical sectors, but it is a
virtual sector that gets translated to physical sectors locally.

Yousuf Khan

 

[mscotgrove]

There is still a sector basis even over the network. It's not
necessarily directly related to the physical sectors, but it is a
virtual sector that gets translated to physical sectors locally.

        Yousuf Khan

Thanks, so you saying I cannot access a RAID greater than 2TB from
XP32, either locally, or via a network. I suppose this may force me
to consider Windows 7 sooner rather later.

Michael

 

[Rod Speed]

Yousuf Khan wrote

(e-mail address removed) wrote

There is still a sector basis even over the network. It's not
necessarily directly related to the physical sectors, but it is a
virtual sector that gets translated to physical sectors locally.

Nope, not if the OS used on the system with the >2TB drive isnt XP.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Thanks, so you saying I cannot access a RAID greater than 2TB from
XP32, either locally, or via a network. I suppose this may force me
to consider Windows 7 sooner rather later.

That would seem to be the case, but has this been fixed in Windows 7?

Yousuf Khan

 

[mscotgrove]

That would seem to be the case, but has this been fixed in Windows 7?

   Yousuf Khan

I am assuming (which may be wrong) that as Vista (32 bit) works with a
RAID > 2TB, it will work over a network as well. I only have one
Vista machine, so I can not test this theory. My logic is that if
Vista works, then Windows 7 will.

Michael

 

[mscotgrove]

There is still a sector basis even over the network. It's not
necessarily directly related to the physical sectors, but it is a
virtual sector that gets translated to physical sectors locally.

        Yousuf Khan

My knowledge of networks is limited but I find it hard to think that a
PC on one of the networks has to know the file system of the device
the data is being saved on. I find it even harder to believe that a
remote PC has to know where FAT or MFTs are saved on the remove
device. This would also lead to two controllers changing the basic
file system. VERY VERY DANGEROUS. Surely the control is via the PC
connected to the remote drive. Thus, there is no need for a remote
device to access any physical or virtual sector of the remote storage.

Have I mis-understood something? It would still be nice to connect XP
to a remotely controlled 3TB drive.

Michael

 

[Rod Speed]

My knowledge of networks is limited but I find it hard to think that a
PC on one of the networks has to know the file system of the device
the data is being saved on.

Yeah, it certainly doesnt. Thats why you can have linux file servers on the lan etc.

I find it even harder to believe that a remote PC has to
know where FAT or MFTs are saved on the remove device.
This would also lead to two controllers changing the basic
file system. VERY VERY DANGEROUS.
Yep.

Surely the control is via the PC connected to the remote drive.
Yep.

Thus, there is no need for a remote device to access
any physical or virtual sector of the remote storage.
Yep.

Have I mis-understood something?
Nope.

It would still be nice to connect XP to a remotely controlled 3TB drive.

It'll work fine if the OS running on the system that has the 3TB drive on it physically can handle that drive.

 

[Eric Gisin]

What does "CACLS X:" say when you try it on the 500 and 3000 GB drives?

 

[Eric Gisin]

Win XP 32 only supports 2TB drives because 32 bit LBA is used by the disk class driver.
Win XP 64 and 2003 support 64 bit LBA with some service pack or hot fix.

If your RAID card supports drives over 2TB on XP, that's because it replaces the disk class driver.
The default drivers for a disk drive are disk.sys and partmgr.sys on XP.

 

[dennis]

Win XP 32 only supports 2TB drives because 32 bit LBA is used by the
disk class driver.

The limitation is there because of the MBR partition scheme.

 

[mscotgrove]

The limitation is there because of the MBR partition scheme.

Solution

Thanks Eric for the CACLS tip. It is not something I have been aware
of. By using CACLS I have managed to set the permissions so that I
can now access the 3TB RAID on my Vista (32) system from my XP system.

FYI, the RAID has an EFI boot sector .

I'm happy, thanks for your help

Michael

 

[Yousuf Khan]

My knowledge of networks is limited but I find it hard to think that a
PC on one of the networks has to know the file system of the device
the data is being saved on. I find it even harder to believe that a
remote PC has to know where FAT or MFTs are saved on the remove
device. This would also lead to two controllers changing the basic
file system. VERY VERY DANGEROUS. Surely the control is via the PC
connected to the remote drive. Thus, there is no need for a remote
device to access any physical or virtual sector of the remote storage.

As I said, it's not a direct physical to network sector relationship.
But think about it, when you access a file over the network, don't you
still need to know how large it is, and how large the file system is?
Don't you still need to know what part of the file you want to read or
write to? So you still need to know the offsets within the file to
access, and that's done by organizing them into sectors.

Now the actual mechanics of where to write the these sectors into the
physical hard disk are taken care of by the host computer, but the
client computer sends them to the host over the network using virtual
sectors. As far as the client is concerned, everything is contiguous,
and it doesn't have to worry about the organization, the host computer
takes care of all of that. But client does have to be told how much
space it has on the file system, so it doesn't attempt to write more
data than there is space for on the file system. Thus you still have the
same overall file system size limit, 2TB in the case of XP.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Eric Gisin]

Wild speculation on a topic you don't understand.
The 2TB limit is from 32bit LBA sectors, which is what the SCSI-3 standard of 2000 supported.
Applications do IO with byte offsets, which are 32 and 64 bit, giving limits of 4GB and near
infinity.
There is no use of LBA in the SMB networking protocols, so no 2TB limit is possible.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Bullshit. SCSI-3 in 2000 was 32-bit LBA, latter versions added 64-bit.

 

[dennis]

Bullshit. SCSI-3 in 2000 was 32-bit LBA, latter versions added 64-bit.

Bullshit? I don't think so. If you grow up and use a proper language, I
might explain it to you. 32bit XP cannot go beyond 2TB with 512 byte
sectors because of 32bit pointers in the MBR partition table.

 

[mscotgrove]

Bullshit? I don't think so. If you grow up and use a proper language, I
might explain it to you. 32bit XP cannot go beyond 2TB with 512 byte
sectors because of 32bit pointers in the MBR partition table.

XP 32 bit out of box will have problems with partitions greater than
2TB because of the MBR.

An EFI disk would need special drivers. I am sure they exist, but I
prefer standard configurations.

However, in my case, I am using Vista 32 bit that does have drivers,
and formatting capability for EFI disks.

From my XP system I can do a DIR of the remote 3TB raid and I can
currently see there is 1.5TB free space. This is same result I get
from the Vista system as I have 1.5TB of files.

From my XP system I need to know nothing about the file system of my
3TB drive over the network, and so I now have a working system

Michael

 

[dennis]

An EFI disk would need special drivers. I am sure they exist, but I
prefer standard configurations.

The problem with 32bit XP is the lack of GPT support. You don't need
special drivers for that.