Working with files larger than 2TiB

[pepak]

I have encountered a very strange problem with huge files. I am trying to pinpoint the source of the problem.

I have a FreeNAS box with 4x 1TB drives in RAID-5, giving me 3 TB of capacity (2.78 TiB). I created a file taking up almost all of the space. There is no problem whatsoever with this file on the FreeNAS. The file is accessible through SMB (Windows Shares) to other Windows machines, and here is where my problems begin: On my Windows XP SP2 machine I can read the file with two rather specialized applications but not with any other: File managers can't read the file, shell commands such as COPY and TYPE can't, hex viewers can't.

I was experimenting with this file a little and found out that:

1) The problem occurs in ReadFile() API call no matter what parameters are used. The error returned is something to the effect of "not enough space to perform this operation" (I am translating from my localized Windows).

2) If I use FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING when opening the file, file reads correctly if I follow the rules for reading non-buffered files.

I would very much like to know if this is some known feature or bug of Windows API, if it is fixed in Vista or 64bit XP or Vista, or if it is maybe a problem in the SMB protocol (either on the side of Windows or FreeNAS). Did anyone try working with huge files like this?

[pepak]

Problem solved: It's a known bug in Windows XP.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/913872