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Largest Harddisk Windows Xp Pro as 1 partition??

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lordgalla

Technical User
Apr 1, 2005
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Hi all;What's the largest hard drive windows xp pro will see as one partition?? Ata-100 or Sata Whatever. Is it 300gig or larger? anyone know? Thanks.
 
It depends what updates are installed or slipstreamed with the installation as well as the file system used:

I beleive that XP can support partitions of up to 4TB when NTFS is used as the filesystem - but pre-SP1 installation disks wont be able create/format the partition during setup.

You'd have to create the largest it supports (137GB if I remember correctly), get into windows and then use something like partiiton magic to expand the partition to the correct size.

If FAT32s used, then I beleive the max size supported is 32GB. That may just be during the initial setup like with NTFs though.

Hope this answers ur question OK
 
ok,Just wanted to know if a 350gig harddrive would work as 1 partition on Xp Pro, NTFS file system, SP1 XP.Thankyou
 
I currently have 3 500GB disks hooked up plus a RAID setup with over 500GB on one drive, so you'll be perfectly fine!
 
You might want to review this link for comparisons of file systems:
madtunes is correct that XP will only format a FAT32 drive as large as 32GB, but it will read larger drives created through other means.

He's also correct in the maximum drive size being 128 GB (137GB where 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes) IF you are not using SP1 or 2. However, rather than expanding the drive using 3rd party tools, you can simply slipstream the service pack into your XP media and then install using that. That should allow you to create drives larger than 128 GB.

More information on Slipstreaming:
 
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