Wednesday, June 10, 2009

2TB limit on 32bits Windows systems

Windows XP 32-bit and Windows 2000 do not support volumes greater than 2TB. Windows XP x64, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista Enterprise/Ultimate (32- and 64-bit versions) do, but in order to create volumes bigger than 2TB from these operating systems, you must convert the disk to GPT file system.

FAT 32
FAT is an acronym for File Allocation Table, which dates back to the beginnings of DOS programming. Originally, FAT was only 16 bits, but after the second release of Windows 95 it was upgraded to 32 bits, hence the name FAT 32. In theory, FAT 32 volume sizes can range from less than 1MB all the way to 2TB. It is the native file system of Windows 98 and Windows Me, and is supported by Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. When FAT 32 is used with Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista though, volume size is limited to 32GB (by the Windows partition utility, i.e. Disk Manager), and the individual file size is limited to 4GB.

NTFS
This acronym stands for New Technology Filing System, and it is the native file system for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista. NTFS offers several features that are not available with FAT 32; i.e. file compression, encryption, permissions, and auditing, as well as the ability to mirror drives and RAID 5 capabilities. The minimum supported volume size for NTFS is 10MB, with a maximum of 2TB when initialized in MBR format or without a limit when initialized in GPT format, with no limit to file size. Volumes created in NTFS can only be directly accessed (not through shares) by Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Vista without resorting to help from third-party products.

source : Lace documentations on the RAID product

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