Maximum External HDD?

[Binnit]

I have 2 External USB/FW HDD (120gb+300gb) both Western Digital

Having had recent problems with these 2 drives (they are now completely reformatted and functional) but before I plug them back in to my own machine are there any limitations imposed by XPPro or PC BIOS that I should consider regarding the size of "additional" drives that can be used?

Are there any fancy settings that I should check before using them?


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[starmedtechguy]

There really shouldn't be a problem. I've never read anything about external drive limitations. The only limitation that you could run into is the number of partitions that you set, and even if you go beyond 24 (all the letters in the alphabet without a and b since they are reserved) there will still be options.

Internally it's a different story. If you are using IDE then you have a limitation as to how many drives you can adde due to hardware limiations, but if you are going external through USB or IEEE 1394 (Firewire) then you shouldn't run into problem.

Good luck!

 

[Binnit]

starmedtechguy
Thanks for your comforting post. I recalled reading somewhere that internally there were some limitations and thought that I had better check out the external situation!

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[ncotton]

There are no limitations, well, not for anything thats on the market at the minute. As long as it is bigger than 4Gig and running on NTFS. NTFS has problems with physical disks smaller than 4GB. Same as FAT has problems with ones bigger than 20GB. However, in both these cases, they are still functional.

Hope this Helps.

Neil J Cotton
njc Information Systems
Systems Consultant

 

[Binnit]

Ncotton
Yep both formatted NTFS.

Thanks to all for the replies

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