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Read GPT hard disk on Windows XP

Cixert

By Cixert
in Windows XP

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j7n

j7n

Posted
Posted

Have you installed recent Intel Rapid Storage drivers? The Standard IDE Controller driver included with Windows does not support big disks, and neither do old versions of the Intel driver. I forgot which ones were bad, probably when they were called Matrix Storage v8 and v9. Version 11.2 works with at least 4 TB.

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realisty

realisty

Posted
Posted
On 2/14/2023 at 3:24 AM, patcat88 said:

So I copied disk.sys and partmgr.sys 5.2.3790.3959 to an XP 32 machine, the original MS disk.sys and partmgr.sys was 5.1.2600.5512. Instead of Disk Management MMC saying "MBR GPT protected", I now see all 16TB of this Seagate HD. The 16 TB drive was formatted to empty from a Win10 box with NTFS on eSATA. SMART says  zero reallocated sectors. But, out of curiosity I ran XP 32 "chkdsk E: /r" on the 16 TB NTFS partition. I really want to be sure all 16 TB is addressable, and not magically loose data left and right months later. I am using a ICH9R southbridge Core 2 mobo.

 

XP32 Chkdsk, is a disaster.
  

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>chkdsk E: /r
The type of the file system is NTFS.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 5)...
File verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 5)...
Index verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 5)...
Security descriptor verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying file data (stage 4 of 5)...
File data verification completed.
CHKDSK is verifying free space (stage 5 of 5)...
Free space verification is complete.
Adding -536871425 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File.
Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

  15259644 MB total disk space.
     35932 KB in 8 files.
        72 KB in 14 indexes.
  14680061 MB in bad sectors.
    543067 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 592913924 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
3906469119 total allocation units on disk.
 148228481 allocation units available on disk.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>

Now I have 0 files on drive, and only ~550 GB free disk space. XP 32 chkdsk really did add 15.5 TB of bad clusters. Ironically the Intel Matrix Raid BIOS config screen says its a ~550 GB drive but I dont have the drive in a RAID config, this 16TB drive never will boot drive. Just extra NAS basically and the tower case has alot of room and is on 24/7. Has anyone else ever run XP 32 chkdsk on a > 2TB GPT drive before?

 

Is chkdsk logic inside NTFS or some other driver? Are there more files to copy from Server 2003 32? Feels like a disaster to leave this GPT drive forever in an XP 32 box if user error, or my error running chkdsk wipes the data. I'll reboot into my Win10 rescue stick and format this drive again and run chkdsk from Win10. Reports are fuzzy online if ICH9 chipset or the Win32 Intel drivers for ICH9 handle > 2TB at all on any OS.

 

i have 4 tb, partitioned with 2.7 TB (2 partitions) chkdsk never caused me any trouble, only trouble i see while using PAE (8 GB) , a partition with only 80 gb left most files are like corrupted, since i know this is maybe a matter of PAE + paragon gpt loader (bug ?) i don;t do a check disk , if i reboot without PAE all is ok, zip, rar' etc opens ok, while using PAE most vids don't open and rar complaint about corrupted header, maybe this partiton is acting anormally because the small free space left.. anyway this shouldn't happend

never used the win 2003 driver, just paragon gpt loader so far .. read my comment here:  http://hardwarefetish.com/524-paragon-gpt_loadersys-bsod-analysis-and-fix#comment-423985

was thinking about using Asus unlocker : https://event.asus.com/mb/2010/disk_unlocker/

bad news: it's suppose to only support Asus Mobos...

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tekkaman

tekkaman

Posted
Posted

I had XP 32 bit before on my PC and it couldn't read gpt partitions. But when I installed XP 64 it reads them fine. I don't know if whatever XP 64 has can be ported back to XP 32.

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realisty

realisty

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Posted
6 hours ago, tekkaman said:

I had XP 32 bit before on my PC and it couldn't read gpt partitions. But when I installed XP 64 it reads them fine. I don't know if whatever XP 64 has can be ported back to XP 32.

i believe using this method: hxxps://www.upload.ee/files/15384334/The_XP_system_is_not_outdated_and_teach...pdf.html

 

should be fine

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realisty

realisty

Posted
Posted
On 2/15/2023 at 3:39 AM, j7n said:

Have you installed recent Intel Rapid Storage drivers? The Standard IDE Controller driver included with Windows does not support big disks, and neither do old versions of the Intel driver. I forgot which ones were bad, probably when they were called Matrix Storage v8 and v9. Version 11.2 works with at least 4 TB.

true!! readed here about the intel rapid storage..: https://www.seagate.com/la/es/support/kb/intel-rapid-storage-technology-rst-drivers-and-support-for-disk-drives-beyond-22-terabytes-tb-218615en/

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tekkaman

tekkaman

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Posted
13 hours ago, realisty said:

i believe using this method: hxxps://www.upload.ee/files/15384334/The_XP_system_is_not_outdated_and_teach...pdf.html

 

should be fine

I have a question about that article. The article states that you can't have an NTFS hard drive that is bigger than 2TB. That if it's bigger than 2TB you have to use GPT. I bought 2 external ones last year and they came in NTFS by default.

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jaclaz

jaclaz

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, tekkaman said:

I have a question about that article. The article states that you can't have an NTFS hard drive that is bigger than 2TB. That if it's bigger than 2TB you have to use GPT. I bought 2 external ones last year and they came in NTFS by default.

The limit is in the partitioning not in the NTFS.

The field (in MBR style partitioning LBA addressing) is 32 bits, so you cannot have more than 2^32 sectors (-1) i.e.  4,294,967,296-1=4,294,967,295

The "usual" or "traditional" size of hard disk sectors being 512 bytes, you can access at most 4,294,967,295x512=2,199,023,255,040 which is the 2 (or 2.2) TB limit .

BUT some new hard disks are "native 4K" (i.e. they have sectors sized 8x512=4096 bytes) or some external disks are mapped (in the USB bridge) to look as if they had 4 KB sectors.

Suddenly you can address with MBR 4,294,967,295x4096=17,592,186,040,320 bytes.

jaclaz

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realisty

realisty

Posted
Posted
On 6/28/2023 at 10:11 AM, tekkaman said:

I have a question about that article. The article states that you can't have an NTFS hard drive that is bigger than 2TB. That if it's bigger than 2TB you have to use GPT. I bought 2 external ones last year and they came in NTFS by default.

as @jaclaz explained, here's also more info. about it:   https://superuser.com/questions/852475/how-can-a-mbr-formatted-hard-drive-exceed-1-81-tib-capacity

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Milkinis

Milkinis

Posted
Posted
On 6/28/2023 at 5:34 PM, jaclaz said:

BUT some new hard disks are "native 4K" (i.e. they have sectors sized 8x512=4096 bytes)

what's the suitable SSD alignment sector size for XP. 1024K or 4096K ?

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jaclaz

jaclaz

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Milkinis said:

what's the suitable SSD alignment sector size for XP. 1024K or 4096K ?

Neither. :w00t:

It doesn't exist an "alignment sector size".

The device will expose either a 512 Byte sector size or (maybe, actually I have not yet seen a SSD that has the larger size ) a 4096 byte sector size.

You cannot change how the device is seen.

Internally the SSD will have a "page size" that is usually a multiple of 4096 bytes.

Normally the "right" alignment for a partition would be 1 Mbyte. (1024*1024)=1,048,576 bytes)

In the case of NTFS, the default cluster size is 4096 bytes and in NTFS "everything is a file", so a NTFS filesystem is inherently aligned to the partition start, for FAT (16 or 32) there are special considerations to make the filesystem aligned to a multiple of the device page size (though on a fast device like a SSD normally is, it won't make a noticeable difference).

The "normal" (even if "wrong") partition alignment on XP is 63 sectors, no matter if HDD or SSD because that is what the XP disk management expects (and will normally create).

You can align the partition to 1 Mbyte (as it happens normally on Vista or later), you won't be able to do that with XP disk manager. you will need a third party tool BUT the first time you will use Disk Management even if for changing another thing (such as the active status of a partition) you will likely lose ALL volumes in Extended partition.

See:

http://reboot.pro/index.php?&showtopic=9897

So, if you plan to align the partition to 1 Mbyte you'd better have ONLY primary partitions OR never use the XP disk manager.

jaclaz

 

 

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Houfino

Houfino

Posted
Posted

Hello people I have a 3TB external drive and I wanted to connect it, so it doesn't work... I read that it is not supported because of GPT... I found a link and it no longer works.. Anyone have one?

Link is dead
GPT LOADER

Edit: I found archive.org...

I still have a problem..I have a 3TB external drive and XP can't read or write to it... I used the Paragon GPT Loader program...Can't convert it to GPT...How should I solve it? Thank you
 

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jaclaz

jaclaz

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Posted

The Paragon GPT loader does not work on external (USB) drives, only internal ones.

Usually (but not always) external hard disks larger than 2.2 TB expose 4KB sectors (and in this case there is no need to have GPT style partitioning).

A "generic" external enclosure may well expose the "normal" 512 bytes sector or be incompatible with 2.2+ TB sized hard disks.

As seen in this thread, using some files from Server 2003 may work, but there is a risk of data corruption/instability.

See also here:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/177379-3tb-drive-and-winxp/

https://msfn.org/board/topic/176480-2-tib-limit-size-in-mbr-hard-drives/

jaclaz

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silverni

silverni

Posted
Posted (edited)

There seems to be some confusion in some of the interventions in the thread.
Drivers from W2k3 and Paragon GPT loader in WinXP allow access to GPT partitioning, but they have little to do with support for disks  larger than 2TB, GPT can also be used on disks smaller than 2TB.
For 3TB+ disk support, other factors are crucial, namely: BIOS, HD controller, drivers; for disks over USB, the primary variable is the USB box controller.
For support for 3TB+ disks with WinXP there are a myriad of more or less proprietary solutions, but no universal solution; you must find and test the solution that best suits your hardware, and the quickest test is just to use CheckDisk from WinXP; if the disk contains data, you need to back it up or transfer it, before running the test.
The support may change if you transfer the HD between the USB box and a controller internal to the PC.
Regards
 

Edited by silverni
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Milkinis

Milkinis

Posted
Posted
On 7/9/2023 at 3:40 PM, jaclaz said:

As seen in this thread, using some files from Server 2003 may work, but there is a risk of data corruption/instability.

jaclaz

what do you recommend then ? Paragon GPT driver + internal HDD ?

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