Re: Problems with 750GB drives?



_X wrote:

On Fri, 02 Jun 2006 05:43:15 GMT, nospam@xxxxxxxxxx (Paul) wrote:

In article <2ebv72lmrquddenh59vm49co4gs1v1jrg8@xxxxxxx>, _X
<nospam@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Now that I think about it, is there a 'magic number' where the drive
geometry overflows some existing spec?

If your controller supports a 250GB drive, then it should support
750GB too.

That's what I meant by 'magic number.' As you know, there's always
some distinct crossover point for binary numbers, drive geometries,
etc. Like the 4GB limit on FAT32 file size, imposed by the top limit
on a 32-bit unsigned integer (Largest number a CPU register can hold).
That probably seemed like an incomprehensibly huge number at some
time.

But I didn't know of any math limits coming into play with large
drives, so what I heard about 750GB drives may be completely
unfounded. Or particular controllers may have BIOS/driver problems.

<<snip>>

I was going to suggest a number, but I visited the Microsoft KB and
a couple articles there suggested the limit was wrong. The 48 bit LBA
should not impose any limits. The Microsoft KB claims that
the "cluster number" used by the file system, is stored as a 32 bit
integer, and depending on how big the cluster is, that would limit
the drive to a pretty large number. (That varies depending on whether
we're talking about FAT32 or NTFS.) I'd read somewhere, that the
_sector_ number was at some point stored in a 32 bit integer, and
that gives a 2.2TB limit. But the Microsoft KB doesn't seem to
reflect that info, so I'm not so sure any more. Even if it was
2.2TB, that would still be a pretty big drive. At 750GB, I don't
think there is any reason to worry.

Paul
.

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