Operating system will also limit large capacity hard drives

At present, desktop computers equipped with more than 80GB hard drives are commonplace, and some users even have a large 160GB hard drive. Due to the continuous decline in the price of hard drives, friends also use hard drives as their first choice when upgrading. As we all know, the main factors limiting the use of large-capacity hard disks are BIOS and motherboard chipset. In fact, in addition to this, the operating system is also an important factor affecting the normal use of large-capacity hard drives.

Operating System Support for Large Capacity Hard Disks

Only 48bit LBA mode is supported (IDE interface specification, Logical Block Addressing, LBA is the way most high-capacity hard disks access data today) The operating system, which uses 48 bits to represent each location on the hard disk, provides support for large-capacity hard drives. Early Windows 95/Windows 98/98 SE/Me did not support 48-bit LBA mode, so it could not provide support for 137 GB or more. The disk management of Windows 98/98 SE operating system can only manage 64 GB hard disk, which exceeds this capacity. The hard drive will not be recognized. Its partitioning software Fdisk can also not correctly identify 64GB hard drives, so if you use it to partition, it will easily lead to identification errors, partition table confusion and so on. If you want to use the Windows 98/SE operating system, you can only use a special method to partition the large hard disk and then install the operating system. In this case, if the BIOS supports 48bit LBA mode, the system can recognize 137GB hard disk capacity, but it is easy to make mistakes during access. Therefore, it is recommended to install dual systems, using NTFS format for partitions after 64GB.

Although the Windows 2000/XP operating system supports 48bit LBA mode, it can correctly identify more than 137GB hard disk, but the support for 48bit LBA mode is not enabled by default. You need to install the patch after installing the operating system. Under normal circumstances, Windows 2000+SP4 and windows xp+SP1 can ensure the correct identification and use of the hard disk. In addition, even if Windows 2000 has patched SP1, check the version of Atapi.sys file under the system, because only version 5.1.2600.1135 can fully support 48-bit LBA. For Windows XP, Atapi.sys file should be version 5.1.2600.1152. Otherwise, there will be an overflow bug when accessing data larger than 137GB, causing damage. The most common case is that after writing a large amount of data (120GB or more), the partition is lost, or the response is lost during the copying of the data, and the partition is not formatted after the restart.

Since these two operating systems provide support for 137GB or more hard drives, we can use their CDs to partition large hard drives. The method is to use the installation CD to start the computer, then separate the hard disk into a zone to install the Windows 2000/XP operating system, and then patch the system first. Then use the system's own disk management tool to partition the remaining unpartitioned parts.

Operating system requirements for partitioning

Windows 98/98 SE/Me Due to disk management restrictions, the limitation on hard disk capacity is limited to 64GB, so When partitioning a hard disk, the total hard disk capacity should not exceed 64GB for multiple partitions or a single partition. For partitions other than 64GB capacity, the NTFS format can be used instead.

The Microsoft technical documentation also mentions the Windows 2000 requirements for partitioning. Although Windows 2000 is backward compatible with the FAT32 format and the FAT32 format supports 2000T hard drives, Windows 2000 does not provide support for FAT32 format partitions over 30GB. As long as the partition capacity exceeds 30GB and is in FAT32 format, Windows 2000 cannot recognize the excess capacity regardless of whether the partition is a C drive or another partition. For partition recognition in NTFS format, Windows 2000 does not have this problem. This is also a concern when zoning! !

Need to remind everyone that for the use of windows 2000/XP CD as a partitioning tool for 137GB or more hard disk partition, when the operating system crashes and reinstall the system, you must not access the drive letter before installing the patch. The last partition, otherwise it is easy to cause data loss or partition table error.

Finally, I hope my friends can use their large capacity hard drive happily.