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TeraByte HDD restrictions

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flagman   10-09-2009 at 03:05:10 AM

What restrictions are there in using a 1.5 TB hard drive externally in a system using XP?

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Bronze Storage badge cjl   10-09-2009 at 03:13:08 AM

None, as long as it is formatted as NTFS and you have SP1 or later.

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flagman   10-09-2009 at 03:26:22 AM

What about partitioning? Any size restrictions, for example? Is there a limit on number of partitions?

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Bronze Storage badge cjl   10-09-2009 at 06:09:33 AM

There is a partition limit - I forget exactly what it is, but it's something like 6 IIRC. There shouldn't be a size restriction though.

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flagman   10-09-2009 at 06:16:18 AM

Any idea where I can find out the partition restrictions? Also, I'm not aware of what IIRC means. Does 6 mean it can have 6 primary partitions? Thanks for your help.

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Bronze Storage badge cjl   10-09-2009 at 07:22:30 AM

IIRC = if I recall correctly.

I looked it up some more, and apparently, you can have at most 4 primary partitions. However, you can set up a primary partition as "extended", and that can be filled with several logical partitions. That should allow for significantly more partitions than if you limited it to purely primary.

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mindless728   10-09-2009 at 07:17:37 PM

dont'w worry about the size of partitions as long as you have XP SP1 or later
MBR (Master Boot Record) allows for 2 TiB/partition

there can be up to 4 primary partitions, not sure about extended partitions (maybe 32) for a total of 36 (depends on the number of extended partitions there can be)

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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   10-09-2009 at 07:24:35 PM

Use folders to seperate different data; not partitions. Partitions are inflexible; you can't easily change the allocation of space to partitions. Folders can.

Some people use partitions as i use folders; i think the folders have every benefit while using partitions for this purpose has no benefits at all.

So in general, try to have as few and as large partitions you can get. This is especially true for data storage, less true for a system disk.

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flagman   10-16-2009 at 02:06:13 AM

sub mesa wrote :

Use folders to seperate different data; not partitions. Partitions are inflexible; you can't easily change the allocation of space to partitions. Folders can.

Some people use partitions as i use folders; i think the folders have every benefit while using partitions for this purpose has no benefits at all.

So in general, try to have as few and as large partitions you can get. This is especially true for data storage, less true for a system disk.





Thanks everyone. You have been a big help.

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