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4TB in W2K?


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Hi, is it possible for W2K to recognize all of my new 4TB drive (made by HGST)?

W2k's disk manager as well as several third-party partioners only show the 4TB disk as having 1678.02GB unallocated, although I have a 2TB (Seagate) drive that shows up with 1863.01GB - the 2TB drive registers more space than the 4TB drive.  In googling this problem, I've noticed that 1678.02GB seems to be what many people's larger drives display as - is there some significance to this number?

This is not the boot drive.  I'd prefer to have it all be one partition, but I could live with 2 2TB partitions, as long as I get to access the whole capacity of the drive.

I'm running SP4 with a bunch of updates I downloaded from MS a few years ago.  If it would help, I'm willing to reinstall W2K using unoffical SP5, although I'm not sure the best way to go about that.  For reference, my technical knowledge is weak: for example, I'm pretty fuzzy on the difference between ATA and AHCI (I believe I set my mobo to operate in ATA mode).

Please let me know if there's any other info about my configuration I should post.  Also, I looked over the first 10 pages of threads here, and I didn't see this question mentioned; sorry if this is a repeat.  Please let me know if there's another thread I should look at.  Thanks!  For the past few years I've enjoyed keeping my W2K setup alive despite M$'s wishes, but now I'm worried that this may be the rock that breaks me.  Thanks to all the regular contributers here, who have done such amazing work to support W2K!

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Which EXACT model is it?

 

Does the disk expose 512 or 4096 bytes/sector?

 

Do you have access to a more recent Windows System? (like a Windows 7)

 

How are you going to connect the disk? (SATA, USB bridge, etc.)

 

jaclaz

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jaclaz,

Model # from the NewEgg invoice:
HGST Deskstar NAS H3IKNAS40003272SN (0S03664) 4TB - OEM

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512/4096 bytes per sector:
I can't figure that out.  I've looked at the following three vendors' descriptions of the product, but I don't see mention of that.  It's also not stated on the box or the little fact-sheet that came inside the box.

Can you tell me how I can figure that out?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145912
http://visioncomputers.com/eItemDesc.asp?partno=0S03664&desc=HGST-H3IKNAS40003272SN-4-TB-3.5-Internal-Hard-Drive&ic=1026756656
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1021396-REG/hgst_0s03664_4tb_7200_deskstar_nas_internal.html

-----------

No access to a more recent system.  I could try to get a friend who has a newer system to help me out.

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It's currently connected to the mobo by a SATA cable, in one of the slave slots.

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I should also have mentioned that the fact-sheet that came in the box tells me to go to http://www.paragon-software.com/hgst/index.htmlto download a "GPT Disk Manager", but when I try to install it, it says:

"No ultra-capacity device found.  Please connect HGST ultra-capacity hard drive to your computer and execute the installation package again."

...even though the disk does show up under W2K's Disk Manager.  As I understand it, W2K can only do MBR, not GPT, so I woldn't expect this "GPT Disk Manager" to work.

 

Thanks for your help!

Edited by andy_p66
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Yep, it seems like the good guys at HSTG do not put these specifications, not even in the spec sheet :(:

http://www.hgst.com/hard-drives/internal-drive-kits/nas-desktop-drive-kit

 

Newish versions of windows allow to determine easily if a disk "exposes" a 512 or a 4096 byte/sector interface, see this only seemingly unrelated thread:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173265-formatting-an-external-drive-using-different-interfaces/

 

Try running the FSUTIL tool (on a more modern Windows).

 

The 2.2 Tb limit that the good Intel and MS (and EFI/UEFI guys) like so much to attribute to MBR partitioning is FALSE.

The MBR limit is 232 -1 sectors, i.e. 4,294,967,295 sectors, which translate, IF the sector is 512 bytes, to the known 2.2 Tb limit:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408/en-us

BUT with modern disks with a 4096 bytes sector size the same amount of sectors translate to 8 times that, i.e. more than 17 Tb.

 

The NTFS filesystem, on the other hand, has not even this file limit, so, in theory there are no issues, as long as you do not want to boot from that drive (because there is no support for booting from 4096 bytes/sector drives in most - possibly all - BIOSes).

 

BUT, while it seems (see the other thread) that XP has NO issues whatsoever with a 4kb sectored disk, it is possible that 2K may have some limitations, it has AFAIK never been tested.

 

However, GPT is supported in Windows 2000 (for a non-boot/system volume):

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/dn653580(v=vs.85).aspx

 

In a nutshell:

  1. if the disk exposes a 4096 bytes/sector interface, it is more likely that a way to access it fully is found (with either MBR or GPT)
  2. if the disk exposes a 512 bytes/sector interface it is more likely that this will happen (with GPT ONLY)

 

Still, both MBR and GPT schemes may find some other issue in a 2K system, possibly also connected to the specific drive model, the only thing is to experiment with it.

 

jaclaz

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A drive that big surely must have 4KB sectors. The difference between ATA and AHCI is that ATA is a SATA compatibility mode that emulates an IDE controller, so older operating systems like Windows 2000 and XP don't need special disk controller drivers to recognise the hard drive. AHCI is just true SATA without the compatibility, so you do need special drivers, but you get all of the features that SATA offers, including the faster speeds and the ability to hot-swap drives.

 

What kind of computer are you using this drive in? I seem to remember some limitation or another that prevents a lot of older computers from properly addressing drives over 2TB. For the life of me I can't remember any details on that.

 

Edit: Derp. Jaclaz pretty much covered what I was trying to remember in his post.

Edited by MrMaguire
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@BlackWingCat

Thank you!  I may ask you more about this.


@MrMaguire

Thanks for the explanation!  Here's some of my info; please let me know if there's anything else I should specify:

mobo: ASUS P5GL-MX
cpu: Intel Pentium 4 630 SL7Z9
chipset: Intel 915GL, Intel ICH6
ram: 4GB
OS: W2K


@jaclaz

You and Dave-H went on quite an odyssey!  It was way above my head, but I enjoyed reading it.  I'm glad there are people out there who are willing to solve puzzles like that, so the rest of us can reap the benefits.  Based on Dave-H's use of fsutil, I did the following:

1. Repartitioned my 80GB OS drive to make a 10GB partition for WinXP.

2. Installed XP.

3. Created a 1.6TB partition (the full space listed as unallocated) on my new 4TB drive, using Windows Disk Manager.

4. Formatted it using Windows Disk Manager:

file-system: NTFS
allocation unit size: default
perform quick format: yes (checked)

5. Booted in XP and ran fsutil:

E:\> fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo g:
NTFS Volume Serial Number :       0x5640995840994023
Version :                         3.1
Number Sectors :                  0x00000000d1c081ab
Total Clusters :                  0x000000001a381035
Free Clusters  :                  0x000000001a379b50
Total Reserved :                  0x0000000000000000
Bytes Per Sector  :               512
Bytes Per Cluster :               4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment    : 1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment : 0
Mft Valid Data Length :           0x0000000000008000
Mft Start Lcn  :                  0x0000000000000004
Mft2 Start Lcn :                  0x000000000d1c081a
Mft Zone Start :                  0x0000000000000000
Mft Zone End   :                  0x0000000003470220
 

 

I noticed that Dave-H's output included a couple of extra lines, especially "bytes per physical sector".  This MS page says Win8 "Includes enhanced 'fsutil' command line utility to query for logical and physical sector size of volume with alignment info".  Is the output above enough for you to tell what's going on, or do you know if I can get that enhanced fsutil.exe and run it on my XP installation?

Thanks!

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I noticed that Dave-H's output included a couple of extra lines, especially "bytes per physical sector".  This MS page says Win8 "Includes enhanced 'fsutil' command line utility to query for logical and physical sector size of volume with alignment info".  Is the output above enough for you to tell what's going on, or do you know if I can get that enhanced fsutil.exe and run it on my XP installation?

The point is to learn what the disk exposes (and also what Windows "sees") when it comes to "physical sector size".

The "enhanced" FSUTIL provides (or should provide this kind of info), which your posted output does not.

But we have a "poor man's way" alright. :yes:

Get rawcopy from here:

http://www.ltr-data.se/opencode.html/

You want to run, once found N which is the PhysicalDrive number, i.e. the Disk number in Disk manager:

rawcopy 0 511 \\.\PhysicalDriveN C:\temp511.bin

rawcopy 0 512 \\.\PhysicalDriveN C:\temp512.bin

rawcopy 0 4095 \\.\PhysicalDriveN C:\temp4095.bin

rawcopy 0 4096 \\.\PhysicalDriveN C:\temp4096.bin

and then look at the exact file sizes of the result, the idea is that rawcopy operates on "blocks" so that it cannot retrieve a number of bytes less than the block size.

Try also on XP (possibly it is available also on 2K, but cannot say) what WMI sees.

You want to run:

WMIC Path Win32_DiskDrive where 'Index=N' Get * /format:list>C:\mywmi.txt

which would provide a number of interesting/useful info.

 

jaclaz

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@jaclaz,

Here is the output from rawcopy and wmic.  Thanks for taking a look!

-------------------

rawcopy 0 511 \\.\PhysicalDrive2 C:\temp511.bin
size=0B
size on disk=0B

rawcopy 0 512 \\.\PhysicalDrive2 C:\temp511.bin
size=512B
size on disk = 4096B

rawcopy 0 4095 \\.\PhysicalDrive2 C:\temp511.bin
size=3584B
size on disk=4096B

rawcopy 0 4096 \\.\PhysicalDrive2 C:\temp511.bin
size=4096B
size on disk=4096B


Sizes determined by right-clicking and choosing Properties.  Btw, results were identical for my older 2TB and 80GB drives.

What does that say about how the disk exposes sectors?

(Since the result was the same for my other 2 drives, I'm guessing that all three are 512e - they expose emulated 512 sectors, with an underlying physical size of 4K/sector.  What I've gathered from my research is that a true 4Kn drive (exposing 4K sectors directly) would only be found in a new, big drive, not my 1.5 year old 80GB drive.) If you have time (no rush), could you tell me what the first two parameters mean and how these sizes are generated?  (I couldn't find any documentation online for this version of rawcopy.exe.)


--------------

Output from WMIC (which was run on XP; there's WMI but no WMIC tool in W2K):

Availability=
BytesPerSector=512
Capabilities={3,4}
CapabilityDescriptions=
Caption=HGST HDN724040ALE640
CompressionMethod=
ConfigManagerErrorCode=0
ConfigManagerUserConfig=FALSE
CreationClassName=Win32_DiskDrive
DefaultBlockSize=
Description=Disk drive
DeviceID=\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
ErrorCleared=
ErrorDescription=
ErrorMethodology=
Index=2
InstallDate=
InterfaceType=IDE
LastErrorCode=
Manufacturer=(Standard disk drives)
MaxBlockSize=
MaxMediaSize=
MediaLoaded=TRUE
MediaType=Fixed    hard disk media
MinBlockSize=
Model=HGST HDN724040ALE640
Name=\\.\PHYSICALDRIVE2
NeedsCleaning=
NumberOfMediaSupported=
Partitions=1
PNPDeviceID=IDE\DISKHGST_HDN724040ALE640____________________MJAOA5E0\5&22A5F58&0&0.0.0
PowerManagementCapabilities=
PowerManagementSupported=
SCSIBus=0
SCSILogicalUnit=0
SCSIPort=2
SCSITargetId=0
SectorsPerTrack=63
Signature=1250565034
Size=1801755809280
Status=OK
StatusInfo=
SystemCreationClassName=Win32_ComputerSystem
SystemName=XPCOMPUTER
TotalCylinders=219051
TotalHeads=255
TotalSectors=3519054315
TotalTracks=55858005
TracksPerCylinder=255

 

Edited by andy_p66
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Yep, the disk is seen as having 512 bytes/sector, i.e. it is one or the other versions of AF/512e.

 

The syntax (not the most friendly around) of rawcopy you can get with "rawcopy /?".

 

But the principle is simple, that tool (many others will probably do, but I know this behaviour of this particular one) is that programs that operate on block devices can only retrieve a single block or a multiple of it.

 

The attempt for 511 bytes is only useful to make sure that the tool works as expected on your system (as no device will have a block size smaller than 512 bytes, with the exception possibly of a few arcane, ancient and obsolete floppy drives).

The result of 512 bytes being actually 512 confirms that your device is seen as 512 bytes/sector.

The result of 4095 bytes being actually 3584 makes this a certainty, as 7*512=3584 is the most the tool can get until it "steps" to 4096.

The result of 4096 is "normal", you would have the same 4096 result on both a 512 and a 4096 bytes/sector device.

 

The "size on disk" means "nothing" (or "next to nothing", I can now say that your c:\ drive has a cluster size of 4096 bytes :yes:, and most probably it is thus using a NTFS filesystem :unsure:).

 

The "issues" come on the WMIC output:

TotalSectors=3519054315->3519054315*512=1801755809280

Size=1801755809280

TotalTracks=55858005

TotalCylinders=219051

TracksPerCylinder=255

SectorsPerTrack=63

219051*255=55858005*63=3519054315

 

Somehow the disk is seen as being around 1.8 Tb in size. this may (or may not, it is to be seen) the show-stopper.

 

It's time for you to start (if I were you I would first try in XP, and only later, if successful, go back to the Win2k) experimenting with 

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/

 

jaclaz

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