Can anyone tell me what the largest partion size windows XP will allow me to have? I have a RAID 5 Array, with 3 * 1TB drives giving me 2 TB usable, 4Kb cluster size. Decided to add my hot spare into the array giving me 4 *1TB - 3TB usable. Array is on a Highpoint 2220 SATA card, and using the highpoint software it sucessfully adds the 4th drive to the array, and shows that the array (called MAIN) is now 3TB usable. Go to use DiskPart to expand and it shows the ability to add something like 200 MB. Start up Partition Magic, and it shows that the current size of 2TB has filled the disk! Any ideas? A bit of google'ing is giving me conflicting advice on the maximum size a single partition can be - some say its far into exobytes others say its 2 TB... Now if its 2TB then thats the problem, if its not, then any ideas where my TB of disk space has gone?
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the mbr can only deal with ntfs partitions up to 2 TB, but the actual maximum size is far beyond anything you will need. so as long as your array is not your boot disk, max size shouldn't be the problem.
Wikipedia says that NTFS can be 2^64 clusters, and if each cluster is 512bytes, then it amounts to a very big volume. Check that your controller has expanded the arrary size to 3TB, rather than just expanding the current array size over more drives (leaving ~300GB unused on each of the drives)
The software states the capacity is 3.00TB I checked the Highpoint Website which states the card (2220) does support arrays over 2TB, will have to check the Bios version as i may be running an old one which should by may nor be supporting arrays of 2TB! Rebuilding the array at the mo, does anyone know of a way i can get the card to offload some of the work to my CPU? The built on XOR engine must be struggling at the mo while my CPU is more or less sitting idle!
array is rebuilt, Highpoint RAID Management Console states the array size is 3TB Disk part says the disk is 2048 GB in size, and has 0 B Free! Partition magic says the same so where’s my extra TB disappeared?
By adjusting cluster sizes, NTFS can natively support upto 16 exabytes, even Windows 8, won't get near needing that.
Did a bit more digging around on the drive, found this: HPT Disk 0_0 SCSI Disk Device Properties - ( under disk management i right clicked and selected properties for the Array Drive) Under Volumes the populated data comes back as: Disk : Disk 6 Type: Basic Status : Online Partition style : Master Boot Record (MBR) Capacity : 209110MB Unalocated Space : 0MB Reserved Space : 0MB This to me says ive got the wrong Partition style?!? IF it is, is it possible to change it without copying off the data, and formatting it?
Unless you're using Vista or later or another OS, which uses GPT you should NOT use drives larger than 2TB and that goes for RAID arrays as well. If you do cross the 2TB line with an OS not supporting GPT you will most likely suffer massive loss of data. Note, some 3rd party drivers cannot handle >2TB even when using GPT. I believe the HighPoint drivers fall in that category.
So can anyone give me guidance on how to now re-create my arrays? Should i go with 2 *1.5TB partitions on a 3TB drive? (will this work!? or stick with 1 2TB drive and have the extra disk as a JOBD?
I have a similar dilemma. I just bought a Dell Perc 5/i card for my XPS 720 system. I am trying to do a RAid 5 Array 1 TB physical disks. I have four disks in total so I should be able to get 3 TB (4-1) of storage. I am using LSI MegaRaid storage software and I am running Vista. After I used the LSI software to init the disk I went to disk manager in Vista to create the partition. It gives me the option of MBR or GPT. I have only slected MBR but when I did that my partition size was only 2TB. I am trying GPT next, here my questions. 1) Does GPT support partitions larger than 2 TB? 2) What are the drawback to GPT? 3) Can anyone suggest a better way to do this?
GPT supports partitions/disks of immense size. The standard is 2^64 blocks, where a block usually is 512 bytes. That gives you a standard size of 8589934592 TB, to use a currently applicable size measurement. The only real drawback is that the disk can only be accessed by operating systems and software capable of handling GPT partitions. For Windows proper support starts with Vista. WinXP x64 and Win 2003 Server (both 32 and 64 bit) can access GPT *data* partitions, but cannot boot from a GPT partition. The problem here is that GPT encompasses the entire disk so you'd need at least 2 physical disks to use GPT on WinXP x64 or Win 2003 Server. Any pre-XP Windows can't handle GPT at all. You can read up on GPT here.
could be a software problem, partition magic doesn't work properly on my array (highpoint 3210 card) either, but it was fine before i upgraded the disks (used to be a 1.5TB array) Acronis disk director worked though if i remember right (i'll check when i get home) does the space show up properly in the disk management utility in windows? As for the max NTFS size i don't know, my array is split into more manageable 0.5 - 1TB partitions. is that an option for you?
