[mythtv-users] Hitachi 3T drives - reliable?

[Mattias Vik]

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 16:25, Edgar Matzinger <edgar at edgar-matzinger.nl> wrote:
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> Hello list,
>
> On 20/01/11 13:49, Simon Hobson wrote:
>> Jean-Yves Avenard wrote:
>>
>> For whatever reason, 2TB seems to be a common limit (I know it is in
>> older versions of Windows). 2TB is 2^31 bytes, so the maximum value for
>> a signed 32 bit integer.
>
> A slip of the calculator: 2^31 equals to 2GB not 2TB.... But yes, 2^31
> is the maximum for a signed (4 byte wide) integer.
>
> Kind regards, Edgar.
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Old FAT partitions have a limit of 2GiB (4GiB if using 64KiB clusters).
NTFS partitions teoretically have a limit of 16EiB... though I think
basic MBR has a limit of 2TiB, but if using GPT it shouldn't be a
problem.
That said, I've seen people complain several years ago that when using
raid arrays to get 2TiB+, it didn't work in Windows XP, but it did
work in Windows XP x64... not sure why.

As for Linux, Ext3 has a max file size of 2TiB, but max partition size
is 16TiB (if using 4k blocks).

All that said, I have never myself tried using a partition bigger than
2TiB... though I do have 2x 2TiB disks that are not in use atm, so
could put them in Raid0 and test if anyone is interested.
That would not test what happens with how the bios sees a 2TiB+ drive,
but atleast I can test what the OS says about it.

/Mattias