XP -Maximum Single HD Capacity

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Renegade87

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 3, 2003
Messages
237
Guys,

Real quick, what is the maximum single hard drive size Win XP will recognize?
 
Completely off the top of my head I seem to remember a Tom's Hardware article where it capped out at 42TB or something but that was in a RAID array.
 
WinXP SP1 will recognise some large drives.

Pre SP1 is limited to something pretty small like 160GB.

The space is there, its just unusuable untill you install SP1
 
Here's the thing,

I'm replacing a WD 160GB SATA HD on an AOI (automated optical inspection) machine at work. It's running XP Pro SP2. The original drive is partitioned 3 ways (C:\20GB, D:\120GB, E:\9GB).

Where this isn't my personal box, I just wanted to be sure that XP would play nice with this drive (Hitachi 7K1000 1TB SATA). before beginning the installation process.
 
If I am not mistaken I believe Pre SP1 is 137gb but as long as it is post SP1 it is unlimited.
 
I stand corrected.

However it is not exactly the standard to have access to 2TB drives or who actually feel the need to create 2TB partitions on XP Pro 32bit. By unlimited I guess I should have clarified that unlimited means common everyday purchasable drives used in a workstation/desktop configuration.

Obviously in a networked server environment(XP 64bit/Server2003) you would have a much greater storage environment and at that point we are comparing apples to oranges.
 
SlowCobra said:
I stand corrected.

However it is not exactly the standard to have access to 2TB drives or who actually feel the need to create 2TB partitions on XP Pro 32bit. By unlimited I guess I should have clarified that unlimited means common everyday purchasable drives used in a workstation/desktop configuration.

Obviously in a networked server environment(XP 64bit/Server2003) you would have a much greater storage environment and at that point we are comparing apples to oranges.
Click to expand...

I totally agree...just thought I would throw the facts out there...:D
 
SlowCobra said:
If I am not mistaken I believe Pre SP1 is 137gb but as long as it is post SP1 it is unlimited.
Click to expand...

It was 137 GB for IDE drives. That was the maximum spec of the PATA standard at the time XP was written and the IDE driver for XP was written to spec. The next PATA standard was extended, and the new driver for that spec was in XP SP 1.

SCSI didn't have the 137 GB limitation.
 
So in summary, the limitation for XP Pro SP2 32bit is 2TB! That's what I thought.

Thanks to all who responded.
 
Keep in mind that the motherboard may not support the drive - I know my 1TB drive doesn't work on one of my older motherboards (circa 04, not really a surprise) and is perfectly at home on my new machine.
 
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