Andalu Posted January 23 Posted January 23 5 minutes ago, Dave-H said: Thanks. I'm only using eSATA because that's the convenient way of physically connecting the caddy to the machine. The caddy has an eSATA socket on it, and the cards I've been using for years have externally accessible eSATA sockets. Of course eSATA and SATA are electronically identical, it's just a (supposedly) more robust connection system for external use. I do have the necessary connectors to connect the caddy directly to the motherboard. 'ASMedia ASM1061 (some versions, depends on firmware)' is slightly worrying. You can bet that the card I've just bought won't have the right firmware! Good to have it confirmed that there are XP drivers, although I had assumed that must be the case or @Andalu would not have been able to do his tests. The driver that can be installed for that card is asahci32.sys, which allows recognition of GPT disks only when the Win2003 disk.sys and partmgr.sys drivers are present in the system. Unfortunately, those versions of the Win2003 drivers result in data corruption as much as the data written to the disk exceeds 2TB, even if no PAE patch has been installed. 1 hour ago, Cixert said: @Andalu did you test, if there is also a 2TiB limit, with the W2003 drivers with PAE?
Dave-H Posted January 23 Posted January 23 Thanks @Andalu. As I said in my previous post, I can connect the caddy/enclosure eSATA connector directly to the motherboard, but I would prefer to use an add-in card if possible, because of the way that other components are connected directly to the motherboard, using all the available SATA ports. I would never use USB from choice, far too slow! Of course, every system is different, and hardware add-ins that works on one system will never necessarily work on another one. With the enclosure connected directly to the motherboard, everything seemed fine. I put well over 2TB of data onto my 3TB disk, and there was no file system corruption evident when I went between Windows XP and Windows 10. With the cards I've tried so far, bad corruption happens.
Dave-H Posted January 23 Posted January 23 1 minute ago, Andalu said: The driver that can be installed for that card is asahci32.sys, which allows recognition of GPT disks only when the Win2003 disk.sys and partmgr.sys drivers are present in the system. Unfortunately, those versions of the Win2003 drivers result in data corruption as much as the data written to the disk exceeds 2TB, even if no PAE patch has been installed. Our posts crossed! That's the same driver file I used with the Asmedia 106x cards I tried. The 3TB GPT disk was recognised OK, even without the Windows 2003 files, everything looked normal, but the filesystem kept getting corrupted.
Andalu Posted January 23 Posted January 23 (edited) 47 minutes ago, Dave-H said: Thanks @Andalu. As I said in my previous post, I can connect the caddy/enclosure eSATA connector directly to the motherboard, but I would prefer to use an add-in card if possible, because of the way that other components are connected directly to the motherboard, using all the available SATA ports. I would never use USB from choice, far too slow! Of course, every system is different, and hardware add-ins that works on one system will never necessarily work on another one. With the enclosure connected directly to the motherboard, everything seemed fine. I put well over 2TB of data onto my 3TB disk, and there was no file system corruption evident when I went between Windows XP and Windows 10. With the cards I've tried so far, bad corruption happens. You should find a board that can allow you to replicate that situation that worked for you. A few months ago I had posted here: https://msfn.org/board/topic/181911-read-gpt-hard-disk-on-windows-xp/page/9/#findComment-1259400 On 2/1/2024 at 8:38 PM, Andalu said: Or you could choose another card like this one, with two external eSATAp ports: to its eSATAp (Power on eSATA) ports you can connect the normal eSATA cable (suitable for 2,5" HDD/SSD drives) and the eSATAp cable with 5v and 12v voltage (suitable for 3,5" HDD drives) like this: You can connect your 3TB GPT drive to the eSATAp port even without its USB3 enclosure. It should also work by using the normal eSata cable if your caddy has its own power supply, but having never tried it I cannot be sure. This is another choice (already posted here https://msfn.org/board/topic/181911-read-gpt-hard-disk-on-windows-xp/page/28/#findComment-1277039): On 1/22/2025 at 12:00 AM, Andalu said: I have tested these two ASM1061 cards: this is the back of one of them (the other contains the same info on the rear): In either case, it is mandatory that the PCI-Ex card of your preference must have the button to select either "No Boot" or "IDE Boot" mode, otherwise it is seen as AHCI and you cannot use the Paragon driver to be able to get the GPT disks to work. Once again, I cannot guarantee that the cards can work in your system as well. I tested all of them with good results....until now . Edited January 23 by Andalu
Andalu Posted January 23 Posted January 23 (edited) 4 hours ago, Cixert said: I have repeated the test without changing the HAL but with the PAE drivers. Now there are no errors, it is clear that the problem is with the HAL change. Do you have used the Dibya PAE patch in your test? On 1/22/2025 at 8:26 PM, Cixert said: I'm going to test my Toshiba 6 TB with 512 byte physical sectors in MBR. What tool do you use to initialize a 6TB disk in MBR that has only one partition? I know of only the WD Quick Formatter that permits such a thing (and allows you to use a 2TB+ HDD in XP). Edited January 24 by Andalu
Cixert Posted January 24 Author Posted January 24 (edited) On 1/24/2025 at 12:39 AM, Andalu said: Do you have used the Dibya PAE patch in your test? What tool do you use to initialize a 6TB disk in MBR that has only one partition? I know of only the WD Quick Formatter that permits such a thing (and allows you to use a 2TB+ HDD in XP). 1-Do you have used the Dibya PAE patch in your test? Yes, i am using Dibya PAE for test. I have tried to rename the hal names back to the original ones but it doesn't work either. Now I have divided the GPT disk into 5 partitions and there are different issues. With the Windows 2003 and Paragon 10.5.0.95 drivers I didn't see the partitions that started above 2 TiB. Now I can see them. I have performed the test on the third partition that starts at 2.5 TiB on the disk. From the first byte it tells me that it is defective, so the problem is not that the GPT disk writes defectively after writing 2 TiB, but that it writes defectively everything that is above a certain sector of the hard disk. This partition starts at cylinder 326354 and sector 5242880768. 2-What tool do you use to initialize a 6TB disk in MBR that has only one partition? I know of only the WD Quick Formatter that permits such a thing (and allows you to use a 2TB+ HDD in XP). That's strange. I use SATA hard disks connected with a USB adapter. Generally any application allows me to initialize MBR disks above 2 TiB. Starting with Windows Device Manager. I recommend using the ones I indicate in this post because they work the best, especially Eassos DiskGenius. https://msfn.org/board/topic/181911-read-gpt-hard-disk-on-windows-xp/page/3/#findComment-1249366 Edited January 24 by Cixert
Cixert Posted January 25 Author Posted January 25 (edited) TCHAN TCHAN TCHAN, MYSTERY ABOUT TO BE SOLVED. I think it is ready for... FINAL JUDGMENT!!!! THE CLUES 1- From Italy @silverni reports that the limit with Windows 2003 drivers is 2 TiB. Also reports from the Dominican Republic @realisty 2- From the Dominican Republic @realisty reports that Paragon drivers do not exceed the 2TiB limit using PAE. Also reports from Italy @Andalu 3- From Italy @jaclaz reports that some USB adapters modify the physical sector information reporting that this is 4096 bytes instead of 512 bytes. He also reports that actually he has not yet seen a SSD that has the larger size a 4096 byte sector size and that disks with physical sector 4096 he thinks only exist from 8 Tb. He also reports that Paragon drivers do not work via USB. 4- From Andorra @Milkinis reports that Microsoft officially only supports disks with 4K physical sector since Windows Eight. 5- From the United Kingdom @Dave-H reports that the physical sector of his Seagate ST3000 disk has 512 bytes of physical sector. 6- From Spain @Cixert reports that his Seagate ST3000 disk has 4096 bytes of physical sector in contradiction with the same unit that @Dave-H exposes. @Cixert also reports that the error does not occur when the disk exceeds 2 TiB, but rather when writing to logical sectors located above those 2 TiB, even if the disk is empty. That is what we will see next and that I think is the key to solving the criminal case. According to the device that I am using to connect the hard disk, it reports a different size of physical sector and logical sector. As a defense we will call @Bill_Gates Oops, he's not on the forum? He must be using a pseudonym Then upload screenshots for this Toshiba HDWD260 disk... *There may be some data transcribed incorrectly, if so I will correct it in the next few hours. AS GPT DISK Logilink USB adapter on any system: Logical sector: 4096 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes JMcrom USB adapter on Windows Seven: Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes JMcrom USB adapter on Windows XP: Logical sector: ???? Physical sector: ???? I will confirm with w2003 drivers SATA on Windows XP 32 bits with Paragon Driver: Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 512 bytes SATA on Windows Seven x64 with native driver: Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes AS MBR DISK Logilink USB adapter on any system: Logical sector: 4096 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes SATA on Windows XP 32 bits: -Does not work. I will try to find some value. SATA on Windows Seven x64 with native driver: Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes It seems that the solution is to find a way to make Windows report that the hard drive has a logical sector size of 4096 bytes, since SATA is reporting that the hard drive on Windows Seven x64 has a physical sector size of 4096 bytes and yet MBR with +2 TiB does not work with SATA, only with the Logilink adapter that reports a logical sector of 4096 bytes. There are still many mysteries to be solved that surely someone knows but we are not getting all the information. Why are some disks limited to 4 TB? What I still don't understand is how the Paragon 8.0.1.0 driver works with SATA +2TiB drives while other versions of this driver don't and Windows 2003 drivers don't either. I think that if we try to solve this we are on the right track. Thanks to all the necessary contributions made by all the users in the thread... @RainyShadow @ED_Sln @WINUSERUntil2023 @Zollex @patcat88 @j7n @tekkaman @Houfino @Saxon @Dixel @D.Draker @Jotnar @mina7601 @dmiranda @TSNH @pappyN4 @aoresteen @user57@roytam1@Outbreaker @Multibooter Remember that the mystery is partially solved and we can read SATA +2TiB disks only with the Paragon 8.0.1.0 driver without PAE. Other versions do not work. Edited January 26 by Cixert 2
j7n Posted January 25 Posted January 25 PAE doesn't have direct impact on the disk size. It limits the amount of RAM. Of course PAE might limit in the sense that the driver may be incompatible and couldn't be used at all. But those drivers are good and used professionally. What about the manufacturer's driver for your disk controller? I have a 4 TB disk working with Intel IaStor 11.2. They added big disk support somewhere at version 9. It would be odd to see GUID Partition Table support in Windows 2003, but the native disk controller driver limiting the size, making GPT pointless.
Cixert Posted January 25 Author Posted January 25 (edited) On the Toshiba HDWD260 6TB hard drive I created 3 GPT partitions and connected this from various operating systems as SATA and USB with different adapters. Then I repeated the process as an MBR disk with another 3 partitions until I completed the 6TB. Almost any system used reports different values for the logical sector size and the physical sector size. How can Windows Seven x64 report a 4096 bytes physical sector while Windows XP x86 reports 512 bytes? This does not seem to represent any change in the number of sectors Windows can read in MBR but it does in GPT. Also the Logilink adapter reports a 4096 bytes logical sector size while any Windows version can work with MBR +2TiB. How can we trick Windows XP into reporting that our GPT disk has a logical sector size = 4096 bytes? BIOS firmware modification? Firmware modification hard disk? (some manufacturers provide tools) create a bootloader, perhaps like the Paragon driver does? USB firmware modification? GPT GPT Paragon 8.0.1.0 SATA XP -4 GiB RAM Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 512 bytes first partition GPT Paragon 8.0.1.0 SATA XP 5 GiB RAM with PAE Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 512 bytes first partition GPT Windows Seven x64 5 GiB RAM Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes MBR MBR JMcrom USB on Windows Seven x64 Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes MBR Logilink USB on Windows Seven x64 Logical sector: 4096 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes MBR SATA on Windows Seven x64 Logical sector: 512 bytes Physical sector: 4096 bytes Edited January 26 by Cixert 1
Cixert Posted January 25 Author Posted January 25 27 minutes ago, j7n said: PAE doesn't have direct impact on the disk size. It limits the amount of RAM. Of course PAE might limit in the sense that the driver may be incompatible and couldn't be used at all. But those drivers are good and used professionally. What about the manufacturer's driver for your disk controller? I have a 4 TB disk working with Intel IaStor 11.2. They added big disk support somewhere at version 9. It would be odd to see GUID Partition Table support in Windows 2003, but the native disk controller driver limiting the size, making GPT pointless. I don't know why the Paragon 8.0.1.0 driver works with 512 byte logical and physical sectors with +2TiB disks (remember that it is not the data size, it is the sectors that can be accessed). I use IDE Mode. Does Intel IaStor 11.2 offer +2 TiB support on MBR or GPT on Windows XP? Some users report that some AHCI drivers are compatible with MBR +2TiB. MOTHERBOARDS -Asus M5A88-M (SB850) & J&W Minix 780G (SB700) in AHCI mode with this driver: ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.25 works ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.86 works ahcix86.sys V3.1.1540.127 (newer) does NOT work and cannot be even installed ahcix86.sys V3.2.1540.35 does NOT work ahcix86.sys V3.3.1540.29 does NOT work The hard disk may not be accessible from higher versions of Windows Inform @Snear https://msfn.org/board/topic/180915-i-can-use-a-5-tb-hdd-in-xp-how-is-that-possible/ Do you think Windows 2003 with IDE mode does not work with GPT +2 TiB disks?
Dave-H Posted January 25 Posted January 25 The card I ordered arrived, and it turned out exactly the same as the ones I tried before! It's still an Asmedia 106x chipset card of course. D'oh! I've now ordered this one, which has the magic mode switch. I'll let you all know how that goes! 2
Cixert Posted January 26 Author Posted January 26 I am using Windows 2003 drivers on XP with a USB adapter that translates the physical and logical sector information as 4096 bytes and the 6 TB GPT disk works perfectly with PAE and 5 GiB RAM. There are many questions to clarify: 1-The official Microsoft information says that only native disks with 4K sector are supported from Windows Eight. So why does both MBR and GPT work on XP with logical sector 4096? Does XP support SATA disks with 4K physical and logical sectors? Otherwise why does the USB adapter work? 2-If I disconnect the disk from the USB adapter and connect this as SATA, no operating system recognizes the partitions because these are in logical sector 4K. Tested on XP-Siete-10. My Windows 10 version is LTSB 2015, will it work on newer versions? 3-I have always heard that Windows XP SP2 supports LBA-48, now it turns out that MBR is limited to LBA-32 and from what I can see GPT is also limited to LBA-32 on XP. how is it possible? I read that Seagate proposed as a solution to the +2TiB limit that its hard drives work as LBA48 but I can't find any more information about this and it seems that the Advanced Format system proposed by Western Digital prevailed. 4-The disk connected by SATA is recognized in Windows Seven-10 x64 as... Logical sector 512 Physical sector 4096 but in XP x86 as Logical sector 512 Physical sector 512 Can anyone check how the +2Tb disks look in Windows Seven or 10 x86 connected by SATA? A bit of literature: -USB to SATA bridge chips and >2Tb drives https://goughlui.com/2013/10/02/experiment-usb-to-sata-bridge-chips-and-2tb-drives/ -4ke (4k emulation) https://superuser.com/questions/1271871/4k-emulation-sata-usb-controllers -Convert unit 4096 to 512 https://www.hddoracle.com/viewtopic.php?f=117&t=1832 -LBA 32 vs LBA 48 vs Advanced Format (1) https://superuser.com/questions/852475/how-can-a-mbr-formatted-hard-drive-exceed-1-81-tib-capacity/866404 -LBA 32 vs LBA 48 vs Advanced Format (2) https://blog.fosketts.net/2010/10/05/hitachi-gst-advanced-format-hard-disk-drive/ What's the point of hard drives reporting their physical sector size? https://superuser.com/questions/982680/whats-the-point-of-hard-drives-reporting-their-physical-sector-size 14 hours ago, Dave-H said: The card I ordered arrived, and it turned out exactly the same as the ones I tried before! It's still an Asmedia 106x chipset card of course. D'oh! I've now ordered this one, which has the magic mode switch. I'll let you all know how that goes! I'm afraid the only way it will recognize +2TiB is for the adapter to perform a logical sector emulation at 4096 bytes. Despite the Paragon charger, currently +2Tb hard disks usually have a physical sector of 4096 bytes, but firmware emit a 512 bytes emulation (512e) to the operating system. In XP these disks are seen as logical and physical sector 512, this way XP will not work as an MBR or GPT disk . In theory, some +2Tb drives work on XP as MBR or GPT because the adapter firmware or the driver hard disk translate the logical sectors to 4096 bytes instead of 512 bytes. It's not really a size question, it's a sectors question. MBR and GPT on XP can only access a limited number of sectors that represent 32 bits (2^32). (4,294,967,296 sectors x 512 bytes = 2,147,483,648 KiB) If the sectors are 512 bytes the limit is 2TiB, if the sectors are 4096 bytes the limit is 16 TiB. Although there are still many questions to be answered. Can XP access a hard disk with 4096 bytes physical sectors? Supposedly the 512e emulation is established because systems prior to Windows Eight are not capable of working with 4096 bytes physical sectors. So why can XP access a disk with 4096 bytes logical sectors? There are also other limits, I have found that some USB adapters are limited to 4Tb in MBR and these same ones to 5Tb in GPT. ¡¡¡Caution: If we format a 512e hard disks with an adapter that reports 4096 bytes logical sectors to the system, this will only be accessible from adapters that reports 4096 bytes.!!!
Cixert Posted January 26 Author Posted January 26 (edited) I have been trying to convince Windows XP that +2TiB disks have a physical sector = 4096 but I have not been able to do it. And even if I had succeeded it would not have worked if I cannot get Windows XP to recognize a logical sector = 4096. According to Microsoft information https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/sql/database-engine/database-file-operations/troubleshoot-os-4kb-disk-sector-size you can change the physical sector in the registry in Windows NT10 with ForcedPhysicalSectorSizeInBytes = 1000 in decimal or = 4096 in hexadecimal (I don't know why they say 4095) Instead of entering the value in Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\stornvme\Parameters\Device I have entered it in: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\IDE\DiskTOSHIBA_HDWD260_________________________KQ000A__\5&297769b6&0&0.1.0\Device Parameters] I have also unsuccessfully consulted chatGPT and he says: The logical and physical sector size that Windows detects for a disk can be seen in the registry at the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\IDE\{DISK_ID}\Device Parameters\Disk HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI\{DISK_ID}\Device Parameters\Disk Within that key, the relevant values are: "PhysicalSectorSize" → Indicates the physical sector size (usually 512 or 4096). "BytesPerSector" → Indicates the logical sector size (512 or 4096). So BytesPerSector can be changed? ChatGPT No, BytesPerSector in the registry is just an informative value that Windows gets from the disk firmware. Changing it manually does not modify how Windows accesses the disk. The logical sector size is determined by the disk firmware and the SATA controller. Windows just reads that value and uses it. If you need to change it, you must do so with one of these methods: Use a USB-SATA adapter that does the 4K translation (like the one you already use). Check if the disk manufacturer offers a tool to change the logical sector (some Enterprise disks allow this). Try on another system or with a different controller, as some force 512B. Modifying BytesPerSector in the registry has no effect, as Windows still uses the actual value reported by the disk. 16 hours ago, Cixert said: There are many questions to clarify: 1-The official Microsoft information says that only native disks with 4K sector are supported from Windows Eight. So why does both MBR and GPT work on XP with logical sector 4096? Does XP support SATA disks with 4K physical and logical sectors? Otherwise why does the USB adapter work? 2-If I disconnect the disk from the USB adapter and connect this as SATA, no operating system recognizes the partitions because these are in logical sector 4K. Tested on XP-Siete-10. My Windows 10 version is LTSB 2015, will it work on newer versions? 3-I have always heard that Windows XP SP2 supports LBA-48, now it turns out that MBR is limited to LBA-32 and from what I can see GPT is also limited to LBA-32 on XP. how is it possible? I read that Seagate proposed as a solution to the +2TiB limit that its hard drives work as LBA48 but I can't find any more information about this and it seems that the Advanced Format system proposed by Western Digital prevailed. 4-The disk connected by SATA is recognized in Windows Seven-10 x64 as... Logical sector 512 Physical sector 4096 but in XP x86 as Logical sector 512 Physical sector 512 Can anyone check how the +2Tb disks look in Windows Seven or 10 x86 connected by SATA? Trying to answer my questions: 1- Windows Vista x86/x64 from KB2553708 perfectly recognizes disks with physical sector 4096 bytes and logical sector 512e. It remains to be seen if it is recognized in this way in XP x64. I don't know what the problem could be in using logical sector 4096 and what will happen if these disks are connected in XP 32 bits. According to Microsoft 4kn (native) with 4k logical sectors only works from Windows Eight https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/backup-and-storage/support-policy-4k-sector-hard-drives but then why do USB adapters with 4k logical sector work on XP? 2- I think that disks formatted with USB adapters that report logical sector 4096 cannot be read via SATA connection in any system if their logical sector is equal to 512e but that it would be possible if their logical sector is equal to 4096. 3 and 4 Still unanswered. I think that in order to read +2TiB disks on Windows XP x86 we need to get an IDE or SATA driver that makes it possible. The problem is getting that driver to only work with that hard disk or to only do it with +2TiB disks. I don't rule out that it might be possible by modifying the registry or getting Windows XP to actually work with LBA-48. Edited January 26 by Cixert
Andalu Posted January 27 Posted January 27 On 1/25/2025 at 3:22 AM, j7n said: PAE doesn't have direct impact on the disk size. It limits the amount of RAM. Of course PAE might limit in the sense that the driver may be incompatible and couldn't be used at all. But those drivers are good and used professionally. What about the manufacturer's driver for your disk controller? I have a 4 TB disk working with Intel IaStor 11.2. They added big disk support somewhere at version 9. It would be odd to see GUID Partition Table support in Windows 2003, but the native disk controller driver limiting the size, making GPT pointless. Interesting. I have never obtained recognition of any of my 5 GPT disks with the v11.2.0.1006 sata driver as well as with any of the sata drivers for Intel controllers. Could you please report more details so that we can realize whether the failure or correct recognition with that sata driver may essentially depend on the characteristics of the disks? Thanks!
Andalu Posted January 27 Posted January 27 (edited) On 1/26/2025 at 6:20 AM, Cixert said: I'm afraid the only way it will recognize +2TiB is for the adapter to perform a logical sector emulation at 4096 bytes. If by "adapter" you are referring to @Dave-H's USB enclosure I think it has only the USB controller. Since he intends to connect the GPT disk via eSata connection the 4K translation typical of some USB boxes is not required. That ASM1061 card provides an additional IDE controller to the system and four sata ports (although only two ports seem to operate simultaneously) that work well with Paragon GPT Loader. In this way, @Dave-H can obtain the same result as when he has connected directly the 3TB GPT disk to the sata port on the motherboard, hopefully Below an image of my 4TB GPT disk connected to the sata port of the same card ordered by @Dave-H. In the Device Manager the card is listed under "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller". Its Hardware ID is "VEN_1B21" and "DEV_0611" that identify an Asmedia device. The system is configured in AHCI mode and the sata/ahci driver is the IRST v11.2.0.1006 installed for the Intel sata controller. The GPT HDD is almost full and I have checked all the files on it without finding any problems: This is an image of the drive as detected by Disk Genius: ~~~~~ Could you please specify the chipsets and possibly also the firmware versions of your Logilink and JMicron USB adapters? I think it is useful to know which chipset and firmware combo can work in XP for GPT and MBR disks recognition and which can't. Thanks! Edited January 27 by Andalu 1
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