Two Gig Limit?!? XP-Home-SP2

[Xanadu]

Hey!

Am I going crazy or am I wrong in thinking that MS finally "fixed" the 2
gig file size limit on an NTFS drive? I was trying to temporarily free
up some room on my main machine to a mostly unused machine with a large-
ish drive (the XP box), and was staring blankly at the screen when the
copy failed at exactly 2 gig. I was just tar-ing up a couple directories
and copying over the LAN to the XP box and then boom! (after 2G)

I thought one of the big things about NTFS-5 was that it could handle >2G
file sizes. If not, is there any kind of update/hot fix I can install?
The XP box is a legit install (shipped from HP), so I'm not concerned
about the WGA BS.

As a side note, I did convert the cluster size to 1k from the
(boneheaded...) 4k default. I can't imagine that has anything to do with
this, but I thought I'd mention it.

Any hints would be appreciated.

Thanx!
M.

 

[John John]

There never was such a file size limit on NTFS volumes, for all intents
and purposes the file size on NTFS is limited to the size of the volume
or drive. Maybe you are thinking of FAT32, but there again the file
size limit is not 2GB, it is 4GB.

John

 

[smlunatick]

There never was such a file size limit on NTFS volumes, for all intents
and purposes the file size on NTFS is limited to the size of the volume
or drive.  Maybe you are thinking of FAT32, but there again the file
size limit is not 2GB, it is 4GB.

John









- Show quoted text -

Could be mistaken for the RAM limit?

 

[John John]

Could be mistaken for the RAM limit?

Could be, but there too, the limit (32-bit Windows) is not 2GB it is 4GB.

John

 

[Xanadu]

There never was such a file size limit on NTFS volumes, for all intents
and purposes the file size on NTFS is limited to the size of the volume
or drive. Maybe you are thinking of FAT32, but there again the file
size limit is not 2GB, it is 4GB.

John

Hmmm... Yes, I do remember now that you're right. It was 4 not 2 Gig.
I supposed it's possible that I needed to F5 the window. When I glanced
at the XP machine, the status bar read 2 gig. I guess it may only be
coincidence.

Still, what would make it fail around there? I was copying close to 10G,
and I got no where near that.

I'll run the copy again just to make sure of the exact file size when it
fails, but the question still stands: Why can't I copy ~10G to an NTFS-5
partition?

Thanx,
M.

 

[John John]

To be more precise:

NTFS Size Limits

Maximum file size:
Architecturally: 16 exabytes minus 1 KB (2^64 bytes minus 1 KB)
Implementation: 16 terabytes minus 64 KB (2^44 bytes minus 64 KB)


Maximum volume size:
Architecturally: 2^64 clusters minus 1 cluster
Implementation: 256 terabytes minus 64 KB (2^32 clusters minus 1 cluster)

Files per volume:
4,294,967,295 (2^32 minus 1 file)

 

[John John]

Hmmm... Yes, I do remember now that you're right. It was 4 not 2 Gig.
I supposed it's possible that I needed to F5 the window. When I glanced
at the XP machine, the status bar read 2 gig. I guess it may only be
coincidence.

Still, what would make it fail around there? I was copying close to 10G,
and I got no where near that.

I'll run the copy again just to make sure of the exact file size when it
fails, but the question still stands: Why can't I copy ~10G to an NTFS-5
partition?

How are you copying these large files?

John

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hey!

Am I going crazy or am I wrong in thinking that MS finally "fixed" the 2
gig file size limit on an NTFS drive?

There's no such limit, and never was. Even on a FAT32 drive, the file
size limit is much greater--4GB.

On NTFS, the limit is 256 Terabytes, much larger than any drive
available, so from a practical point of view there's no limit.

 

[Xanadu]

How are you copying these large files?

John

It's a .dv of a DVD (Yes, I own it, I need to make several "edits" to it
so it's watchable by my 8 year old son... ). I want to make a backup
of it before I go hacking at scenes and adding in bleeps. It's just
under 10G. I'm simply mounting the SMB share to my machine:

smbmount //taka-nuva/Space /mnt/winbox -o rw

and then:

cp ~/Video/Movies/Title01.dv /mnt/winbox

It's just a straight-forward copy. Nothing special.

P.S.
I know this is a Windows group. I post here since this is a problem with
Windows. ReiserFS (the file system I use) doesn't have a problem with
huge files and it seems NTFS doesn't either, judging on your's and
other's posts to this thread) so something else is at work here.

 

[John John]

It's a .dv of a DVD (Yes, I own it, I need to make several "edits" to it
so it's watchable by my 8 year old son... ). I want to make a backup
of it before I go hacking at scenes and adding in bleeps. It's just
under 10G. I'm simply mounting the SMB share to my machine:

smbmount //taka-nuva/Space /mnt/winbox -o rw

and then:

cp ~/Video/Movies/Title01.dv /mnt/winbox

It's just a straight-forward copy. Nothing special.

P.S.
I know this is a Windows group. I post here since this is a problem with
Windows. ReiserFS (the file system I use) doesn't have a problem with
huge files and it seems NTFS doesn't either, judging on your's and
other's posts to this thread) so something else is at work here.

It should work, maybe someone in xnix user groups would know why it's
failing. You should be able to access the linux box over the network
and see if Xcopy or Robocopy can copy it to the XP box.

John

 

[John H Meyers]

Despite the larger theoretical limit on the size of a *file*,
you will have a hard time finding 32-bit *programs*
which won't fail on files as soon as they reach 2GB
(notably including anything from Microsoft with "Outlook" in its name)

Also see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/259837

Copying over a network is also problematic.

--

 

[John John]

Maybe you should have read the resolution, for Windows 2000 it was fixed
with Service Pack 2, the last service pack for Windows 2000 is SP4.

Video editing software and backup programs frequently blow the 2GB barrier.

John

 

[Alias]

Despite the larger theoretical limit on the size of a *file*,
you will have a hard time finding 32-bit *programs*
which won't fail on files as soon as they reach 2GB
(notably including anything from Microsoft with "Outlook" in its name)

Outlook 2003 and 2007 handle .pst files waaaaaaaaaaaaay over 2GB.

Alias

 

[John H Meyers]

Outlook 2003 and 2007 handle .pst files waaaaaaaaaaaaay over 2GB.

Many 32-bit programs still don't, however,
so there still remains an issue of much existing software
(including investments already made in MS, plus third party products)
not being able to utilize theoretical hardware limits,
nor even theoretical OS limits.

My 300_GB USB "book" drive came formatted as FAT,
with a note saying that Windows XP could never re-format it
the same way as it came -- has that been fixed as well?
(I have re-formatted it myself as NTFS, as recommended, but this is
just another illustration of various "glass ceilings" in software)

--

 

[Onsokumaru]

Many 32-bit programs still don't, however,
so there still remains an issue of much existing software
(including investments already made in MS, plus third party products)
not being able to utilize theoretical hardware limits,
nor even theoretical OS limits.

My 300_GB USB "book" drive came formatted as FAT,
with a note saying that Windows XP could never re-format it
the same way as it came -- has that been fixed as well?

XP won't offer you the option to format a drive larger than 32GB as FAT32.

You could use some third party tool to do this.

This isn't a "bug" or something that is "broken", it is by design.
Having said that I am not exactly sure what the theoretical maximum
partition FAT32 can support, but obviously it's more than 300GB.

 

[Alias]

Many 32-bit programs still don't, however,

Like what?

Alias

 

[John H Meyers]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:00:00 -0600:

JHM>> Many 32-bit programs still don't, however,

Alias> Like what?

Like practically any program which I (and those who call my Help Desk)
actually use which stores anything (like email) in files,
including still-in-use slightly older versions of Outlook and OE.

Here is a fine utility progam
which mentions its own inability to open any larger file:

"Show a friendly error message
when opening a file larger than 2GB instead of crashing"
http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadprohist.html

Since 2GB is 2^31 bytes,
and is too large to represent as a 32-bit signed integer,
it does not seem entirely surprising that this happens in various programs.

SYMPTOMS: "You cannot print an EMF file that is
larger than 2 GB in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003"
CAUSE: "This problem occurs because offsets are treated as
signed 32-bit integers in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904563

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189981
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/274598
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2024916&SiteID=1
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...83-bcca-4598223bd59d&cat=&lang=&cr=&sloc=&p=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=411462&SiteID=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2722681&SiteID=17

--

 

[Tim Slattery]

This isn't a "bug" or something that is "broken", it is by design.
Having said that I am not exactly sure what the theoretical maximum
partition FAT32 can support, but obviously it's more than 300GB.

The maximum partition size for FAT32 is 8 terabytes
(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006). FAT32 would be a *really,
really* spectacularly bad choice for a partition anywhere near that
size.

 

[John John]

Many 32-bit programs still don't, however,
so there still remains an issue of much existing software
(including investments already made in MS, plus third party products)
not being able to utilize theoretical hardware limits,
nor even theoretical OS limits.

My 300_GB USB "book" drive came formatted as FAT,
with a note saying that Windows XP could never re-format it
the same way as it came -- has that been fixed as well?
(I have re-formatted it myself as NTFS, as recommended, but this is
just another illustration of various "glass ceilings" in software)

These are not file system or operating system limitations, they are
application limitations. If your programs (including any by Microsoft)
cannot handle files larger than 2GB contact them and ask them to fix
their programs.

As for formatting FAT32 over 32GB on Windows XP that is not news and it
is not a bug. It's been like that since Windows 2000 and it was
deliberate. If you think that formating a 300GB drive to FAT32 is a
good idea then there is nothing stopping you from using another
operating system or another disk formating utility and doing it, Windows
XP will be able to mount the drive and use it properly. In my opinion,
unless you have very specific needs, formatting such a larger drive to
FAT32 is not a very good idea.

John

 

[Alias]

On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 04:00:00 -0600:

JHM>> Many 32-bit programs still don't, however,

Alias> Like what?

Like practically any program which I (and those who call my Help Desk)
actually use which stores anything (like email) in files,
including still-in-use slightly older versions of Outlook and OE.

Here is a fine utility progam
which mentions its own inability to open any larger file:

"Show a friendly error message
when opening a file larger than 2GB instead of crashing"
http://www.editpadpro.com/editpadprohist.html

Since 2GB is 2^31 bytes,
and is too large to represent as a 32-bit signed integer,
it does not seem entirely surprising that this happens in various programs.

SYMPTOMS: "You cannot print an EMF file that is
larger than 2 GB in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003"
CAUSE: "This problem occurs because offsets are treated as
signed 32-bit integers in Windows XP and Windows Server 2003"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/904563

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189981
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/274598
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2024916&SiteID=1
http://www.microsoft.com/communitie...83-bcca-4598223bd59d&cat=&lang=&cr=&sloc=&p=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=411462&SiteID=1
http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=2722681&SiteID=17

--

Guess you better up date the programs as it's not a fault of NTFS but
the program.

Alias