Windows XP RAID Capacity

R

rebelcommander

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Sep 25, 2009
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I understand the 2tb MBR limit, I understand this is because of the 32bit addressing issue with 512 byte sectors. I have also read in a number of places that one can increase the sector size to increase the usable capacity of the array.
So, I have 4 tb drives configured in a RAID 5 array, which should have a capacity of 3tb. When setting it up I configured it with 4k sectors. According to "teh intarwebz" this should allow me to address up to 16tb. This box is running Windows XP and when I go into the Disk Management console it shows the drive size as 2tb. I ran a checkdisk and was able to confirm that the sector size 4096 bits. I also went into my RAID card's management console and confirmed that the array was reporting 3tb as the size.
I'm wondering if there's anything I need to do or if it's just not possible to have a 3tb array work with XP even if I use larger sectors?
 
From my very limited understanding of VSS, it's generally not recommended for Windows but if you're going to try the hack, the big sector size partition can't be the boot device. So you'd have to make a smaller partition to boot and then your huge partition as a secondary partition.
 
I should have mentioned, the array is not the boot device. I have a smaller hard drive which has my Windows install on it.
 
Can't you just make it a GUID disk? I haven't ever really messed with really big disks in winxp before..
 
The obvious solution is just to create separate 2TB volumes in your RAID management and then combine them as JBOD if you really need a single drive letter.
 
It should work. I had a 6tb RAID array using 4k blocks on Windows XP a long time ago. There weren't really any steps involved in making it work either...wonder why you are having problems.
 
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