Read GPT hard disk on Windows XP

[Andalu]

22 minutes ago, pappyN4 said:

I'm assuming when you formatted it with XP it was an incorrect 1.6TB size?  I was never able to get XP to format to it's correct 4TB, so it always ended up being corrupted one way or another.

 

Thanks to the asmedia asahci32.sys driver together with the disk.sys and partmgr.sys drivers from W2K3, a GPT disk is detected in XP in its full size and can also be formatted, as shown in the following image:

The problem, unfortunately, remains that you cannot use the space above 2TB because writing beyond that limit will result in corrupted files.

[pappyN4]

Interesting... and yet scary that it misleads you into thinking it will work.

[Dave-H]

My 3TB disk certainly looked as if it would work fine.
Unfortunately, any data written to it using XP produced a badly corrupted file system, which was unreadable in Windows 10, and vice versa.
And that was without getting anywhere near to having over 2TB of data on the disk.

[aoresteen]

I bought the Pargon GPT driver around 2016ish and used a 3TB internal SATA hard drive with my daily main computer. WinXP.  I had around 2.6 TB of data mostly ripped DVD files,  MP4 & Mp3 files on it. I never had an issue with it. Around late 2020 I built a Win10 computer and finally moved off WinXP. I put the 3TB drive in the Win10 computer and all the files were fine.  It is still there today.

I do not know what version the GPT driver is.  I still use.my old XP computer reguarly but it now has 4 2TB HDs in it for data along with a 300GB boot drive and  BR optical drive.  I have found using 2TB drives with XP works best so I do not bother with GPT anymore.

I also add the MS patch to XP that adds the eFAT files system to XP so I can read write to my USB  eFAT flash drives.

Edited April 9 by aoresteen

[Andalu]

On 4/6/2024 at 3:14 AM, pappyN4 said:

Interesting... and yet scary that it misleads you into thinking it will work.

I was misled by the fact that copying files beyond 2TB was going smoothly and that checking via chkdsk in both XP and Win10 had never reported anything unusual. Moreover, even though the total amount of data copied to a GPT disk had exceeded 2TB (2,963,807,977 bytes), all files were still correctly listed in Windows Explorer.

Only later, after @Dave-H's reports, did I discover that some video files copied at earlier times were no longer playable because they were corrupted. Quite a catch

[Andalu]

On 4/6/2024 at 1:27 PM, Dave-H said:

My 3TB disk certainly looked as if it would work fine.
Unfortunately, any data written to it using XP produced a badly corrupted file system, which was unreadable in Windows 10, and vice versa.
And that was without getting anywhere near to having over 2TB of data on the disk.

In my case that did not happen: in my latest tests I copied video files (it is easier to check them) in successive stages in both Win10 and XP and at the end of each copying stage I always checked the integrity of the files in both operating systems without finding corrupted files until I exceeded the limit of 2,194,701,336,336 bytes.

Copying a few more GB beyond this limit, I found that some files copied in the early stages were now corrupt.

[Andalu]

On 4/9/2024 at 3:46 PM, aoresteen said:

I bought the Pargon GPT driver around 2016ish and used a 3TB internal SATA hard drive with my daily main computer. WinXP.  I had around 2.6 TB of data mostly ripped DVD files,  MP4 & Mp3 files on it. I never had an issue with it. Around late 2020 I built a Win10 computer and finally moved off WinXP. I put the 3TB drive in the Win10 computer and all the files were fine.  It is still there today.

I do not know what version the GPT driver is.  I still use.my old XP computer reguarly but it now has 4 2TB HDs in it for data along with a 300GB boot drive and  BR optical drive.  I have found using 2TB drives with XP works best so I do not bother with GPT anymore.

I also add the MS patch to XP that adds the eFAT files system to XP so I can read write to my USB  eFAT flash drives.

Good to know that in your case Paragon GPT Loader worked. Here it has never worked in any of my systems.

It would be interesting to know what motherboard you installed it on, whether it has intel or amd or other controller, the type of controller (sata or IDE) on which XP is installed, and, if possible, the specs of your 3TB disk (which can be obtained in Win10 with the command "fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo") to have some chance to figure out why the Paragon driver did not work on my systems and whether it can also work for disks larger than 3TB.

I really hope to get the Paragon driver working properly on my systems as well, so that I can realize that the 2TB limit in GPT disks can be exceeded through the use of a disk driver.

[Dave-H]

FWIW, the Paragon driver is working fine on my system, as far as I know.
I've left it installed, even though I don't now need it.
Unfortunately, the file system corruption problems I had were there regardless of whether I was using the Paragon driver or the files from Windows 2003 to provide GPT support.

[Andalu]

@Dave-H

With the Paragon GPT Loader driver installed, does your system detect the 3TB disk as a GPT drive?

 

 

Edited April 13 by Andalu

[Dave-H]

Yes it does.

[Andalu]

2 hours ago, Dave-H said:

Yes it does.

Good!

What is the driver and what version do you have installed for the internal sata or IDE controller?

Could you please also report the specs of your 3TB GPT disk that can be obtained through the command

fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo

in the Win10 command prompt?

Thanks!

[Dave-H]

The version of my GPT_Loader.sys is 10.5.0.95.
I have the full HFS+ program installed, but I don't think you need that just to get GPT support.

I think this is probably all you need. 

GPTLoader.zip

The 3TB disk details are -

C:\WINDOWS\system32>fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo I:
NTFS Volume Serial Number :        0x01da43553017acb0
NTFS Version      :                3.1
LFS Version       :                2.0
Total Sectors     :                5,860,530,168  (2.7 TB)
Total Clusters    :                  732,566,271  (2.7 TB)
Free Clusters     :                  329,433,181  (1.2 TB)
Total Reserved Clusters :                  1,024  (4.0 MB)
Reserved For Storage Reserve :                 0  (0.0 KB)
Bytes Per Sector  :                512
Bytes Per Physical Sector :        512
Bytes Per Cluster :                4096
Bytes Per FileRecord Segment    :  1024
Clusters Per FileRecord Segment :  0
Mft Valid Data Length :            107.75 MB
Mft Start Lcn  :                   0x0000000000005a53
Mft2 Start Lcn :                   0x0000000000000004
Mft Zone Start :                   0x000000002b9495a0
Mft Zone End   :                   0x000000002b955dc0
MFT Zone Size  :                   200.13 MB
Max Device Trim Extent Count :     0
Max Device Trim Byte Count :       0
Max Volume Trim Extent Count :     62
Max Volume Trim Byte Count :       0x40000000
Resource Manager Identifier :      9710E0BD-AF47-11EE-A000-003048C77E47

I hope this helps!

[Andalu]

@Dave-H

Thank you.

What is missing is the info about the SATA or IDE driver that is installed in your system.
It may be that the failure of the Paragon driver to recognize the GPT disks in my systems may depend on that.

 

P.S.: I already have the Paragon driver.

 

 

[Dave-H]

I just wanted to make sure that you had the same version of the Paragon GPT driver that I have.

Sorry, I forgot about the IDE /SATA driver!

All the driver files are standard (I assume) Microsoft files.

[Andalu]

@Dave-H

Thank you for all the information.

I have the same version of the Paragon driver.

From what I see in the image the driver installed on your system should be the one that supplied with the CD that is bundled with the motherboard or at least the one available on the manufacturer's site as compatible with your board.
For several of my motherboards, however, there are no XP-compatible drivers, and those that can be installed do not appear to be compatible with the GPT Loader.
If I remember correctly, only one that I still have somewhere has the option of setting IDE mode in the bios. Maybe I will give it a thought and restore it to try the Paragon driver.

Just out of curiosity and you will excuse me for being so insistent: in the Device Manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, could you please right click on Intel(R) 631xESB/6321ESB/3100 Chipset Serial ATA Storage Controller-2680, choose Properties -> Driver -> Driver Details and post the driver name and version?

Thankssss