Win2K System Partition Limit?

[a073235]

What is the size limit for a system partition under Windows 2000? We currently use 2GB Ghost images and expand them to the length of our 20GB drives using the "ExtendOEMPartition" parameter in SysPrep. Soon we will be shipping 40GB+ drives, and I recall reading somewhere of a limit for Win2K like NT 4.0's limit of 7.8 GB. There is a reference in

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q224/5/26.ASP,

but not enough information. Heath
Principal Systems Engineer
Desktop and Mobile Platforms

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

What filesystem are you using?

FAT32 has a max size of 4 TB, Win 2k can only create up to 32GB and can mount up to 2 TB.

NTFS seems to have a size limit of 2 TB, although I thought that it was much higher.

If you are using Win 2k, I would go NTFS. Mike Wills
RPG Programmer

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my programming!"

Please let us (Tek-Tips members) know if the solutions I provide are helpful to you. Not only do my posts help you but they may help others.

 

[a073235]

This is NTFS v5. Those are the limits for a normal partition - not the system partition... Heath
Principal Systems Engineer
Desktop and Mobile Platforms

 

[Zaitht]

I don't have documentation to support but we haven't had problems doing the following... We use ghost 7.0. Baseline image is set at 2000 Pro 4 GB NTFS ( 2 GB C:\ and 2 GB D:\) We image out to 40 GB drives. We have run sysprep but don't use the ExtendOEMPartition switch in the answer file. Instead we use the ghost switch DST=1, SZE2=F. This keeps the D partition at 2 GB and extends C to the full extent of the drive. In our case, 38 MB.

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Why do you do that? Why don't you go the other way around and extend the D drive? Mike Wills
RPG Programmer

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my programming!"

Please let us (Tek-Tips members) know if the solutions I provide are helpful to you. Not only do my posts help you but they may help others.

 

[a073235]

Great info - thanks! Heath
Principal Systems Engineer
Desktop and Mobile Platforms

 

[a073235]

Also, you may want to read this "warning" from MS when using third party tools to expand/contract NTFS v5 images rather than ExtendOEMPartition - it made us worried enough to stop doing it:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q240/1/26.ASP

"Applying an image created on a larger disk to a smaller disk is not recommended when you are using the NTFS file system because NTFS keeps information in its own metafiles about the size of the volume and location of its NTFS metadata. Allowing the disk-imaging software to extend or shrink the volume may compromise the NTFS file system's integrity."


Mike - I stand corrected - thanks for the info as well! Here's an article I finally found:

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q240/6/72.ASP

Heath
Principal Systems Engineer
Desktop and Mobile Platforms

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Well...I wasn't sure if my source was correct or not. But i guessed it was pretty close and for what you wanted to know, it was a good enough answer (even if it wasn't 100% correct). Mike Wills
RPG Programmer

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my programming!"

Please let us (Tek-Tips members) know if the solutions I provide are helpful to you. Not only do my posts help you but they may help others.

 

[Zaitht]

I wish we could make it that simple! But... we work where the client's are very spoiled, (We are now migrating from a Win95 client /Novell Server enviornment with no config management to a 2000 Pro client/ 2000 server enviornment with FULL config management. We wanted to provide an area for the client to save data files and basically do what they want hence the 2 GB D partition. The C partition is set aside for system files and local installed programs. This partition is fully locked down with no access given to the clients. (Docs and Settings was moved to D Partition during the initial unattended install of 2000) The client's have full rights to the D partition. With exception to the admin and all user profiles. We figured why limit what programs can be installed on the system locally by setting a determined C partition. It should be the other way round. 2 GB of data can go a long way... Specially when we teach to save critical data to the network (plan to lock this down to either 100-300 MB per client).

Heath- Thanks for the articles- We came across the first which is why we create the image on the smallest H/D we support. A 4 GB drive. We've tested imaging to a 6, 10, 12, 20 and 40 GB configuration. (Wouldn't it be very helpful if they could order one type of system for everyone with the same exact config for all???? )

Anyway- Thanks for the second article. Knowledge is power!

 

[iSeriesCodePoet]

Okay...that makes sense now. Mike Wills
RPG Programmer

"I am bad at math because God forgot to include math.h into my programming!"

Please let us (Tek-Tips members) know if the solutions I provide are helpful to you. Not only do my posts help you but they may help others.