what is the max. amount of hard drive memmory can windows xp suppo

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Ken, if the XP system is formatted using fat32 instead of ntfs,

doesn't it have a two terabyte limit ?

Jerry
 
Squire said:
Ken, if the XP system is formatted using fat32 instead of ntfs,
doesn't it have a two terabyte limit ?
Click to expand...

No. FAT32 can theoretically support partitions as large as 32TB, but
has nothing do with the maximum size of the entire disk. You can have
many partitions on a physical disc, and many physical disks connected
to your computer.
 
Thanks, Tim,

I just didn't understand the relationship between formatting and size.

Jerry
 
No. FAT32 can theoretically support partitions as large as 32TB, but
has nothing do with the maximum size of the entire disk. You can have
many partitions on a physical disc, and many physical disks connected
to your computer.
Click to expand...

Microsoft has purposely "lamed" FAT32 formatting in XP. Your can only
successfully format FAT32 partitions/disk up to 32GB. This is "forcing" NTFS
as the new "default" formatting standard.
 
Yves said:
Microsoft has purposely "lamed" FAT32 formatting in XP. Your can only
successfully format FAT32 partitions/disk up to 32GB. This is
"forcing" NTFS as the new "default" formatting standard.
Click to expand...


Not quite. Even though XP itself can't create a FAT32 partition larger than
32, you can do it very simply by first using FDISK from an older boot
diskette. Although NTFS is normally the better choice and I don't recommend
FAT32 except for dual-booting situations, it's easy enough to make large
FAT32 partitions and XP will happily use them if they already exist.
 
Eli said:
what is the max. amount of hard drive memmory can windows xp support?
Click to expand...

See
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_tdrn.asp

*****
In theory, the maximum NTFS volume size is 2^64 clusters minus 1
cluster. However, the maximum NTFS volume size as implemented in
Windows XP Professional is 2^32 clusters minus 1 cluster. For example,
using 64-KB clusters, the maximum NTFS volume size is 256 terabytes
minus 64 KB. Using the default cluster size of 4 KB, the maximum NTFS
volume size is 16 terabytes minus 4 KB.

Because partition tables on master boot record (MBR) disks only
support partition sizes up to 2 terabytes, you must use dynamic
volumes to create NTFS volumes over 2 terabytes. Windows XP
Professional manages dynamic volumes in a special database instead of
in the partition table, so dynamic volumes are not subject to the
2-terabyte physical limit imposed by the partition table. Therefore,
dynamic NTFS volumes can be as large as the maximum volume size
supported by NTFS. Itanium-based computers that use GUID partition
table (GPT) disks also support NTFS volumes larger than 2 terabytes.

*****

So the largest single disk that can be supported is 2 terabytes (2048
gigabytes) which is substantially larger than anything currently on
the market (but maybe next month?)

By using multiple hard drives and dynamic volumes you could, at least
in theory, get up to 16 terabytes of hard drive space to appear as a
single drive in XP.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
 
Not quite. Even though XP itself can't create a FAT32 partition larger than
32, you can do it very simply by first using FDISK from an older boot
diskette. Although NTFS is normally the better choice and I don't recommend
FAT32 except for dual-booting situations, it's easy enough to make large
FAT32 partitions and XP will happily use them if they already exist.
Click to expand...

My beef with NTFS was that there was no easy/cheap way to access [read
and write] to an NTFS vol. from a DOS boot to do emergency repairs if XP
couldn't boot standard or safe mode. Now of course there are free
drivers one can add to a bootdisk to do so.

http://www.datapol.de/dpe/freeware/
 
Plato said:
Not quite. Even though XP itself can't create a FAT32 partition
larger than 32, you can do it very simply by first using FDISK from
an older boot diskette. Although NTFS is normally the better choice
and I don't recommend FAT32 except for dual-booting situations, it's
easy enough to make large FAT32 partitions and XP will happily use
them if they already exist.
Click to expand...

My beef with NTFS was that there was no easy/cheap way to access [read
and write] to an NTFS vol. from a DOS boot to do emergency repairs if
XP couldn't boot standard or safe mode. Now of course there are free
drivers one can add to a bootdisk to do so.

http://www.datapol.de/dpe/freeware/
Click to expand...


I agree with you. I wish Microsoft had provided such a tool built-in.
 
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