I'm in the market for a 6 TB HDD (Western Digital or Seagate without SRM)

is anyone in this forum using large internal SATA hard drives under windows XP 32bit ?

I am not 100% sure if it's safe to use 3rd party utilities or drivers during XP installation that can read/write GPT partitions...

I have read somewhere that it's also possible to create 2TB partitions within the same disk but don't know how a 32bit XP could handle this.

I know that the best alternative is using Server 2003 or XP 64bit but the lack of drivers and BSOD is what stop me from switching.

 

XP doesn't support GPT anyways, so forget about installing it on such a drive.

You may be able to use it as a second/non-system disk with the help of Paragon GPT Loader (does another such tool exist?), but when i tried it i always got BSOD on boot...

 

I don't want to install XP in it anyway it would require a 64 bit Windows + UEFI

you get a BSOD ? what hard drive were you trying to format with Paragon utility ?

 

I was not trying to format a drive, i was just trying to access the contents of already formatted GPT drives. But my XP won't boot with GPT Loader installed. It may have something to do with the version i tried, but i read about others getting a BSOD too.

In the end i wrote that off and used a Win7 VM to access those drives.

GPT support can be added to XP by copying the disk.sys and partmgr.sys files from Server 2003 x32 and replacing them. I do not know how stable this method works, I have not yet tested disks larger than 2TB.

@ED_Sln Does this need specific versions of these files, or any version for Server2k3 would do?

 

[edit] just downloaded Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (32-bit x86) , it has these two files inside. I may not be able to test them before monday though.

Edited July 18, 20206 yr by RainyShadow

On 7/18/2020 at 2:41 PM, RainyShadow said:

I was not trying to format a drive, i was just trying to access the contents of already formatted GPT drives.

you have to remove the GPT protective partition to access your data but I would not try this method if you don't have a backup of your data. 

I just want to know how safe the Seagate tool (or similar) is for this purpose. https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/beyond-2tb/

I can create 3 partitions in 6TB HDD but....

¿ is there a way in which Windows might brake the partitions system and all my data becomes inaccessible under XP or W7 ??

9 hours ago, RainyShadow said:

Does this need specific versions of these files, or any version for Server2k3 would do?

Any version of Server 2003 x32 can be used.

So this is what SMR means?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingled_magnetic_recording

Slow write speeds, suitable for backups/archiving, but otherwise behaves like any ordinary HDD?

On 7/18/2020 at 8:33 PM, RainyShadow said:

[edit] just downloaded Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (32-bit x86) , it has these two files inside. I may not be able to test them before monday though.

Link is dead.

Edited May 24, 20215 yr by UCyborg

8 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Link is dead.

Look for WindowsServer2003-KB914961-SP2-x86-ENU.exe with your favorite search engine.

On 5/25/2021 at 12:48 AM, RainyShadow said:

Look for WindowsServer2003-KB914961-SP2-x86-ENU.exe with your favorite search engine.

readed here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=79711&start=20

about file corruption using 2k3 drivers.. anyone can confirm this??

 

interesting article about installing gpt on XP:  hxxps://www.upload.ee/files/15384334/The_XP_system_is_not_outdated_and_teach...pdf.html

Edited June 28, 20233 yr by realisty

16 hours ago, realisty said:

about file corruption using 2k3 drivers.. anyone can confirm this??

if you want to share a link here, take a minute to remove unwanted junk from the url such as your own translation