What HD partition size restrictions with win 2000?
Dave Niemeyer
all HD partitions. Is that true? If not what are the size limits for both
the boot partition and all other partitions? I've set up win 2000 pro on a
8 gig partition and it works fine as far as I can see although I've also
heard that NT4 had a 7.8 or something max partition and if you exceeded that
you wouldn't have problems until your data exceeded that and then you'd lose
data.
Thanks in advance for your time.
Dave Niemeyer
The Everettes
No, it's not true. Unless he was talking Terabytes.
--
A+, MCP, SOB, POS and a few other things I've been called.
Look at me trying to sell stuff!
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=385558844
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=385833442
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=385562742
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=385554507
"Dave Niemeyer" <dnie...@jps.net> wrote in message
news:OnRAX$U8$GA.284@cppssbbsa05...
Stuart
I wonder how I manage to access my two 37Gb partitions then?
4Tb was the limit for NTFS4, not sure about NTFS5, but I'll wager its no
less!
Stuart
Andrej Budja
On Wed, 19 Jul 2000 00:06:38 -0700, "Dave Niemeyer" <dnie...@jps.net>
wrote:
>I've been told that win2000, all versions, have a 4 gig max restriction for
>all HD partitions. Is that true?
NO!
> If not what are the size limits for both
>the boot partition and all other partitions?
None that you would break. For now the practical limit is 2 TB
>I've set up win 2000 pro on a
>8 gig partition and it works fine as far as I can see although I've also
>heard that NT4 had a 7.8 or something max partition and if you exceeded that
>you wouldn't have problems until your data exceeded that and then you'd lose
>data.
This was true from NT4 but not for w2k.
Andrej
--
Andrej Budja, MCSE+I, MVP
Dave Niemeyer
Thanks guys for the info., so 2 TB then. O.K.. I'll go out and find a 3 tb
hard disk today just to test it out......... :)
Dave N
----------------------------
"Andrej Budja" <andrej...@no-spam-please.bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:nf4bns4f53gr5u743...@4ax.com...
Stuart
you back the cost of quite a few good nights out, but if you want one you
gotta have one! :)
Stuart
"Dave Niemeyer" <dnie...@jps.net> wrote in message
news:#GszV9X8$GA.88@cppssbbsa05...
Andrej Budja
wrote:
>Thanks guys for the info., so 2 TB then. O.K.. I'll go out and find a 3 tb
>hard disk today just to test it out......... :)
Once you do that I hope you will borrow it so I can do more testing :)
Mezzo
limitations. If you had NT format the partition it was 4 GB max (limitation
of FAT 16B), If you used another utility to format the partition NTFS -
Limit was 7.8 GB (true on binary) or somewhat over 8 billion bytes (HD mfr
calculations, based on base 10) - This was based on BIOS LBA limitation of
7.8 GB without Init 13 extensions. NT 4 did not understand Init 13 and
would not start from bigger partition. However, any other partition, or
volume, after the initial partitions could be huge because once NT was
booted, it no longer used the BIOS.
This has been resolved in Win2K - it recognizes the Init 13 extensions and
can boot from any size volume that you can create.
"Dave Niemeyer" <dnie...@jps.net> wrote in message
news:OnRAX$U8$GA.284@cppssbbsa05...
> I've been told that win2000, all versions, have a 4 gig max restriction
for
> all HD partitions. Is that true? If not what are the size limits for
both
> the boot partition and all other partitions? I've set up win 2000 pro on
a
> 8 gig partition and it works fine as far as I can see although I've also
> heard that NT4 had a 7.8 or something max partition and if you exceeded
that
> you wouldn't have problems until your data exceeded that and then you'd
lose
> data.
>
Andrej Budja
To follow up a bit, that 4 GB limit came from NT4 setup program that
formatted all partitions with FAT and then converted them to NTFS if
necessary. Because FAT is limited to 4 GB in NT 4...
w2k setup now natively supports NTFS so there is no conversion and no
4 GB limit...
you could say now, that the limit is the sky :)
Andrej
--
Andrej Budja, MCSE+I, MVP
On Wed, 19 Jul 2000 20:32:28 -0400, "Mezzo" <the_h...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
Yi Ren
######################################################
######################################################
2. CONFIGURING BOOT DEVICES FOR WINDOWS NT AND 2000
by John L. Joseph, Senior Software Engineer, Executive SoftwareI very often
get a chance to talk to our users. In many cases, they ask me, "How should I
set up my machine?" Well, that's a little like getting asked "How do I like
my pizza?" Everyone's needs are a little different. But, in this and future
articles, I'll tell you how I set up my Windows NT4 and Windows 2000 systems
for my personal use and why. Perhaps you'll find it informative. This
article covers boot devices.
First, due to my long experience working with NT, I always put 2 full
installations of NT on the machine, in different partitions; the first
partition being a FAT-16 partition, and the second a NTFS partition with
4096-byte clusters. During my day-to-day operations, I always use the NTFS
boot. But if anything goes wrong, I have a virginal FAT installation of NT I
can use to boot and "fix" the NTFS boot.
Now, I happen to know, again from long, hard experience, that Windows NT4
cannot access more than 1024 cylinders during the boot process. This is
documented in the Microsoft Knowledge Base, which you can see in the MS KB
articles I've linked to at the end of this article.
During bootup, Windows NT4 uses the BIOS primitive INT 13 for disk I/O. The
INT 13 interface uses 24 bits to describe the disk location to be read.
Inside that 24 bits is a 10-bit field for cylinder, an 8-bit field for head,
and a 6-bit field for sector. This means the INT 13 interface cannot access
cylinders past 1023. The maximum amount of sectors accessible to the INT 13
interface is therefore
Cylinders * heads * sectors = 1024 * 256 * 63 = 16,515,072 (A purist not
familiar with INT 13 operations will almost certainly note that 63 is not a
power of 2. 63 is used because sectors have addresses in the range 1-63.
Heads and cylinders have addresses in the range 0-255 and 0-1023,
respectively.)
Hence, the total amount of space accessible to the INT 13 interface is:
sectors * 512 bytes = 16,515,072 * 512 = 8,455,716,864 bytes
or
7.875 GB
Certainly any attempt to read a file during bootup from beyond 7.875GB will
fail and result in the INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. The above calculation was
done for a device with 63 Sectors Per Track , 256 Heads, 1024 Cylinders.
Not all drives can be configured that way, however. If the drive is
configured so it has, for example,
63 Sectors Per Track
128 Heads
2048 Cylinders
The 1024 Cylinder limit still applies, so we do the arithmetic:
1024 * 128 * 63 * 512 = 4,227,858,432 bytes,
Which is HALF the space of the previous drive. All we did is half the number
of heads and double the number of cylinders. But since the 1024 cylinder
limit still applies (because that's all INT 13 can handle), the amount of
space usable by NT for boot files is HALF that of a "correctly configured"
drive.
As a result, while the first drive can be used in its entirety for booting
NT, only HALF the second drive can be used for booting NT .... EVEN THOUGH
THE DRIVES HAVE THE SAME TOTAL CAPACITY.
Therefore, when installing NT4 I know I cannot put any bootable portion past
the 4GB boundary in the second case. Otherwise I run the risk of rendering
my system unbootable.
It would astound you the number of people I've run into who got a 20GB drive
to put in their NT laptop, and decided to "make it all one system
partition". A year later, during their Service Pack installation, some vital
file couldn't be placed within the 1024-cylinder "safe area". After they
install their Service Pack...oops! Their system wouldn't boot.
Now, you may ask, what about Windows 2000? Well, during the boot process
Windows 2000 will use any INT 13 extensions in the BIOS if they exist,
therefore, the 1023 cylinder does not apply on a machine with INT 13
extensions in the BIOS. However, not all BIOSes support the INT 13
extensions, so if you have a BIOS without INT 13 extensions, you're still in
the same situation you were under Windows NT4 -- a 1024 cylinder limitation.
Therefore, when I install Windows NT or Windows 2000 on a new machine, I
look to see if the machine's first drive is a SCSI disk or an IDE disk. If
it's an IDE disk, I take a look in the BIOS for the disk geometry. If the
IDE disk I am considering installing on exceeds 1024 cylinders in size, I
know I have to be very careful about how I install NT or Windows 2000. I
consider that BOTH of my bootable NT partitions must lie within the
1024-cylinder "safe area", especially if I am unsure if this machine has INT
13 extensions in the BIOS.
For further reference, check out the following Microsoft Knowledge Base
articles:
Q98080 - 1024 Cylinder Limit, How Windows NT Gets Drive Geometry:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q98/0/80.asp
Q161563 - How Windows NT Handles Drive Translation:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q161/5/63.asp
Q154052 - Explanation of X86 Boot Drive Limitations:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q154/0/52.asp
Q224526 - Windows NT 4.0 Supports Maximum of 7.8-GB System Partition:
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q224/5/26.asp
--
Yi Ren
Enterprise Solutions
Axiom Systems, Inc.
2550 Northwinds Parkway, Suite 440
Alpharetta, GA 30005
(770) 645-0770
(770) 645-0880 FAX