This is logical block addressing, not memory addressing. 32-bit Vista
and above do support 64-bit logical block addressing as long as the SATA
controller will support it. Some don't. Your's worked because you have
the luck of the draw hardware wise. You also apparently got a disk that
was already formatted as GPT or at least was not already formatted as
MBR. That would have required that you delete that partition to
reformat the drive as a full size GPT drive.
What you cannot do on 32-bit Vista is boot from that 3TB drive without
reformatting it back down to a 2TB MBR drive. See the list of
restrictions by OS here. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT_Disk>
Even if you have a 64-bit OS it's not a guarantee that your hardware can
boot from a GPT disk since the BIOS must recognize and support the
64-bit LBA and new data structures as well as the OS. Most likely do by
this time but an older Vista or Win7 system might not.
Chuck Norcutt
On 12/18/2013 6:53 PM, Moose wrote:
> Huh?
>
> My poor old desktop is still 32 bit Vista.
>
> I have a couple of 3TB disks, one live, one back-up. I simply formatted them,
> full capacity, as NTFS, with no special
> stuff/effort/fuss.
>
> Big Disk Moose
>
> On 12/18/2013 2:19 PM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
>> This was still bugging me since Just a Bunch of Disks shouldn't have any
>> special characteristics regarding the disks. I think your problem is
>> (and this was news to me but not terribly surprising) Windows XP doesn't
>> support disks larger than 2TB at all, and Win Vista and later may balk
>> at disks larger than 2.19TB depending on your hardware and if the
>> manufacturer of your 3TB disk pre-formatted it with a 2TB NTFS
>> partition. To uses disks larger than 2.19 TB they must be formatted
>> differently with what's called a GPT format (GUID PT or Globally Unique
>> Partition Table). Basically, the 3TB disk is up against the limits of
>> 32-bit logical block addresses of the older MBR (Master Boot Record
>> Format). GPT is a newer standard which uses 64-bit logical block
>> addresses. In addition, if the disk was pre-formatted at the factory
>> with a 2TB partition that partition will have to be deleted and the disk
>> reformatted using GPT. See this item for more details of what to do.
>> See answer #16 to question #12 at top of the page
>> <http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-performance/i-have-a-3-tb-drive-windows-7-ultimate-wont-format/b1cc3811-f25f-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5>
>>
>> If you follow the instructions there you should recover all of the
>> space. But do be aware that that's only for a data drive. If you want
>> to be able to boot from a 3TB drive there are hardware requirements
>> going back to the motherboard and a 64-bit OS is required.
>
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