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#1
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Help on max number of hard drives
I'm running a straight forward Win 7 U x64 machine allbeit with now 10
hard drives I have tried to initialize and partition a couple of new drives but it just comes up with errors saying i need to convert to gpt or gpd (sorry can't remember what one) i rebooted with a bootcd for an app called mini tool partition wizard home v6.0 and it will format to ntfs but its size is only 2048gb and 746 is unallocated, if i convert to this format called GPT it makes a hidden partition of 128mb and a data partition of 2794GB. My question is why can't i just format like i used to with drives C, D, E, F etc? Is this GPT safe to use in windows and apps like Acrinics true image or do i need to buy another bit of software to format these new drives. Jim |
#2
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Help on max number of hard drives
Jim wrote:
I'm running a straight forward Win 7 U x64 machine allbeit with now 10 hard drives I have tried to initialize and partition a couple of new drives but it just comes up with errors saying i need to convert to gpt or gpd (sorry can't remember what one) i rebooted with a bootcd for an app called mini tool partition wizard home v6.0 and it will format to ntfs but its size is only 2048gb and 746 is unallocated, if i convert to this format called GPT it makes a hidden partition of 128mb and a data partition of 2794GB. My question is why can't i just format like i used to with drives C, D, E, F etc? Is this GPT safe to use in windows and apps like Acrinics true image or do i need to buy another bit of software to format these new drives. Jim GPT is for drives over 2TB in capacity. It allows you to take a 3TB or 4TB drive, and use the entire thing for one partition. Go back and look at C, D, E, F. Are any of them bigger than 2TB ? Or were those drives smaller ? If they're smaller, then legacy MBR is sufficient and that's what we've been using on the older OSes. I expect if you install enough hard drives, eventually you could run out of letters for the partitions. I presume someone has a clever solution for that. You see, there have been people who do "stupid pet tricks" with hard drives, like install every OS in existence on the drive, use a whole bunch of logical partitions, and people like that would likely use up all the drive letters (A to Z). I don't know what comes after Z :-) Paul |
#3
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Help on max number of hard drives
On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 18:32:15 +0000, Jim
wrote: I'm running a straight forward Win 7 U x64 machine allbeit with now 10 hard drives I have tried to initialize and partition a couple of new drives but it just comes up with errors saying i need to convert to gpt or gpd (sorry can't remember what one) i rebooted with a bootcd for an app called mini tool partition wizard home v6.0 and it will format to ntfs but its size is only 2048gb and 746 is unallocated, if i convert to this format called GPT it makes a hidden partition of 128mb and a data partition of 2794GB. My question is why can't i just format like i used to with drives C, D, E, F etc? Is this GPT safe to use in windows and apps like Acrinics true image or do i need to buy another bit of software to format these new drives. Jim This has nothing to do with the number of drives you have. Rather, it's a result of you using a 3tb drive. You have to use the newer partitioning scheme with drives (or arrays) 2tb. |
#4
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Help on max number of hard drives
On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 17:14:14 -0500, Paul wrote:
I expect if you install enough hard drives, eventually you could run out of letters for the partitions. I presume someone has a clever solution for that. You see, there have been people who do "stupid pet tricks" with hard drives, like install every OS in existence on the drive, use a whole bunch of logical partitions, and people like that would likely use up all the drive letters (A to Z). I don't know what comes after Z :-) Windows won't care if you run out of letters, it just won't let you assign a letter to the drive. You can still mount it in a folder, though. Drive free space reports are bogus in that case (you'll always get the free space of the drive it's mounted in) and there seem to be some setup bugs with sharing but it otherwise works. (I have a backup box with multiple drives mounted in C:\Backup which is then shared--this means it uses only one drive letter on any system that's accessing it. If I change the configuration I have to unshare the directory, share the new volume on it's own, then put it in the folder and share the folder again. Annoying but not a showstopper. |
#5
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Help on max number of hard drives
On Tue, 04 Feb 2014 18:32:15 +0000, Jim
wrote: I'm running a straight forward Win 7 U x64 machine allbeit with now 10 hard drives I have tried to initialize and partition a couple of new drives but it just comes up with errors saying i need to convert to gpt or gpd (sorry can't remember what one) i rebooted with a bootcd for an app called mini tool partition wizard home v6.0 and it will format to ntfs but its size is only 2048gb and 746 is unallocated, if i convert to this format called GPT it makes a hidden partition of 128mb and a data partition of 2794GB. My question is why can't i just format like i used to with drives C, D, E, F etc? Is this GPT safe to use in windows and apps like Acrinics true image or do i need to buy another bit of software to format these new drives. Question is with over 2T there are other considerations, past segment limitation of hard/firmware drives of yesteryear;- different ways to address it, easiest being a recent revision MB's BIOS/SATA equipped for natively passing thru -- say to W7, as you mention for the drive's native capacity -- information as needed to interpret what precisely needs addressing (when formatting out large drives in W7 and ignoring stopgap software solutions for earlier OS limitations, such as Win-XP). Formatting them out, as you continue to include a max number of the post header should be: 4 primary partitions permitted for switching actively to said partitions numbering for four actively engaged or primary-linked Operating Systems, with a logical number of partitions permitted, numbering to the 27 letters to the alphabet. I'm advancing the number 27 upon W7 as the same number of drives that OS Win-XP will allow, needless to mention I doubt I've ever exceeded, variously, a dozen drives from personal experience. And do, yes, experiment with a minor note of caution on different software solutions for formatting. The results may at times differ for favoring interesting solutions to who's who among such utilities. |
#6
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Help on max number of hard drives
On 02/04/2014 04:14 PM, Paul wrote:
[snip] GPT is for drives over 2TB in capacity. It allows you to take a 3TB or 4TB drive, and use the entire thing for one partition. I have a 320GB drive in this computer, using GPT. The OS formatted it that way without asking. GPT has some advantages, even for smaller drives although I don't understand that. Go back and look at C, D, E, F. Are any of them bigger than 2TB ? Or were those drives smaller ? If they're smaller, then legacy MBR is sufficient and that's what we've been using on the older OSes. BTW, "over 2TB" (requiring GPT) applies to the physical drive. MBR won't allow you to use more than 2TB, regardless of partition size (this is because of MBR using 32-bit fields for sector number). ( 2 ^ 32 ) * 512B = 2TB. I expect if you install enough hard drives, eventually you could run out of letters for the partitions. I presume someone has a clever solution for that. You see, there have been people who do "stupid pet tricks" with hard drives, like install every OS in existence on the drive, use a whole bunch of logical partitions, Those (for non-Windows OSes) drives could be using a format (ext4?) unrecognizable to Windows. and people like that would likely use up all the drive letters (A to Z). I don't know what comes after Z :-) An older DOS (v2?) would allow up to 63 drives, although the "letters" above Z were strange (probably ASCII). I think Windows won't let you access any disks beyond Z. Paul -- Mark Lloyd http://notstupid.us "Loyalty to a petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul." [Mark Twain] |
#7
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Help on max number of hard drives
Mark Lloyd wrote:
BTW, "over 2TB" (requiring GPT) applies to the physical drive. MBR won't allow you to use more than 2TB, regardless of partition size (this is because of MBR using 32-bit fields for sector number). ( 2 ^ 32 ) * 512B = 2TB. Actually, there is a way to do that. And the software is part of the free version of Acronis TIH on the Seagate and WD sites. The idea is, when a drive is over 2TB, a filter driver is installed by Acronis, which takes sector offsets above 2TB and makes them into a virtual drive. The second virtual drive then shows up in Windows. So perhaps in Disk Management, I'd see "Disk 3 2048GB" and "Disk 5 748GB". If you examine the physical disk, there is a second MBR at roughly 2TB plus 256KB or so. So it's like two MBR-limited disks, living on the same storage device. The Acronis "Extended Capacity Manager" is the thing that installs the driver and makes it work. Once you've done that, you can boot Linux, and do a loopback mount of the area above 2TB. You have to work out the offset precisely, and the Linux mounter accepts an offset above 2TB (64 bit offset). The only problem, when I tested that, is it's dreadfully slow. The NTFS partition mounted that way, could only copy files at 10MB/sec. The Acronis TIH solution does work, but it's a bear to get it running. Most of the time, the option to use Extended Capacity Manager will be grayed out and it won't work. I had to do a lot of fiddling with it, until it worked. At least Acronis have now figured out how to remove that filter driver, as in previous versions of TIH, they could install but not remove the filter driver. The claim was, at the time, if you attempted to remove it manually, it would blue screen the computer. But now, you can even get the filter driver as a separate package. I installed just the filter driver in Windows 8.1 Preview, and my 3TB drive could be "seen as two drives" in Windows 8.1. So I was able to test that the scheme could work in a couple OSes. But it's not an experience I'd look forward to again, trying to get it to work on a new disk drive. ******* That doesn't change the fact, as you point out, that the MBR is limited to 32 bit sector addresses. That limit is still present, but the filter driver idea at least allows the capacity to be used, by preparing a virtual drive to use the rest of the capacity. One RAID controller (Areca) solves this problem, by abusing the notion of sector size. If your array size is larger than 2TB, you can tick an option to pretend sectors are 4KB in size, and then a larger array can continue to use MBR instead of GPT. (i.e. 32 bit sector address times 4KB, to give addressing up to 16TB or so.) ******* As for an OS defaulting to GPT, that might have something to do with UEFI support in the BIOS or something. My experience here, loading a modern OS on a legacy BIOS motherboard, is it defaults to MBR. It could be, that GPT is preferred, if the Disk Management recognizes that GPT can be made to work for booting the OS. Paul |
#8
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Help on max number of hard drives
On Wed, 05 Feb 2014 21:11:05 -0500, Paul wrote:
Not especially a passable portrait of ugly-as-baboon arses in heat in the case of $1000US Areca SATA controllers (as listed on and if within NewEgg's generic policy for farming out products on a basis of [their reputability and exposure] 3rd-party jobber and middleman end suppliers, i.e., the middling art of the selfsame for potential profits from exclusionary politics.) Amazon has an interesting policy for someone stealing money by not delivering an ordered product: Simply, they don't. In my case, ultimately disallowing customer service, as it's farmed out to an agency not integral to Amazon's corporate structure (while neither being accessible, per se, for purposes of arbitrator to the general public). Not that Amazon in any way impeded a satisfactory and prompt solution;- in fact, as I may have mentioned, I thought they were every bit as proficient, as an extended widow further permitted by my most excellent credit card institution. Pragmatically aside, though, sounds like you may already have suggested a strong case for sticking within a newer revised MB's SATA specs on above 2T or 3+T-class drives. (10MByte/Sec sounds adequately chilling indeed to send shivers down a spine.) Actually, there is a way to do that. And the software is part of the free version of Acronis TIH on the Seagate and WD sites. The idea is, when a drive is over 2TB, a filter driver is installed by Acronis, which takes sector offsets above 2TB and makes them into a virtual drive. The second virtual drive then shows up in Windows. So perhaps in Disk Management, I'd see "Disk 3 2048GB" and "Disk 5 748GB". If you examine the physical disk, there is a second MBR at roughly 2TB plus 256KB or so. So it's like two MBR-limited disks, living on the same storage device. The Acronis "Extended Capacity Manager" is the thing that installs the driver and makes it work. Once you've done that, you can boot Linux, and do a loopback mount of the area above 2TB. You have to work out the offset precisely, and the Linux mounter accepts an offset above 2TB (64 bit offset). The only problem, when I tested that, is it's dreadfully slow. The NTFS partition mounted that way, could only copy files at 10MB/sec. The Acronis TIH solution does work, but it's a bear to get it running. Most of the time, the option to use Extended Capacity Manager will be grayed out and it won't work. I had to do a lot of fiddling with it, until it worked. At least Acronis have now figured out how to remove that filter driver, as in previous versions of TIH, they could install but not remove the filter driver. The claim was, at the time, if you attempted to remove it manually, it would blue screen the computer. But now, you can even get the filter driver as a separate package. I installed just the filter driver in Windows 8.1 Preview, and my 3TB drive could be "seen as two drives" in Windows 8.1. So I was able to test that the scheme could work in a couple OSes. But it's not an experience I'd look forward to again, trying to get it to work on a new disk drive. ******* That doesn't change the fact, as you point out, that the MBR is limited to 32 bit sector addresses. That limit is still present, but the filter driver idea at least allows the capacity to be used, by preparing a virtual drive to use the rest of the capacity. One RAID controller (Areca) solves this problem, by abusing the notion of sector size. If your array size is larger than 2TB, you can tick an option to pretend sectors are 4KB in size, and then a larger array can continue to use MBR instead of GPT. (i.e. 32 bit sector address times 4KB, to give addressing up to 16TB or so.) ******* As for an OS defaulting to GPT, that might have something to do with UEFI support in the BIOS or something. My experience here, loading a modern OS on a legacy BIOS motherboard, is it defaults to MBR. It could be, that GPT is preferred, if the Disk Management recognizes that GPT can be made to work for booting the OS. Paul |
#9
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Help on max number of hard drives
On 04/02/2014 5:14 PM, Paul wrote:
I expect if you install enough hard drives, eventually you could run out of letters for the partitions. I presume someone has a clever solution for that. You see, there have been people who do "stupid pet tricks" with hard drives, like install every OS in existence on the drive, use a whole bunch of logical partitions, and people like that would likely use up all the drive letters (A to Z). I don't know what comes after Z :-) Of course, it's been around for a long time already. Windows allows you to mount hard drives as subfolders under other drives, just like with Unix/Linux. This works okay, but there are a few problems. Windows own utilities, like Resource Monitor, don't support drives without drive letters. You will not see ResMon monitoring these drives. Windows is still sort of set in the mindset of drive letters, even after all of these years. Yousuf Khan |
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