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Max HD size for GA MA785GMT motherboard



 
 
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  #1  
Old March 5th 12, 01:26 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
Mike Skuczas
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2
Default Max HD size for GA MA785GMT motherboard

As the title says, I would like to know what is the max size hard drive
I can install. Otherwise is the size determined by the OS? My OS is Win
&, 32 bit.

Mike Skuczas
  #2  
Old March 5th 12, 04:48 AM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
Paul
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 13,364
Default Max HD size for GA MA785GMT motherboard

Mike Skuczas wrote:
As the title says, I would like to know what is the max size hard drive
I can install. Otherwise is the size determined by the OS? My OS is Win
&, 32 bit.

Mike Skuczas


One source of info, is the disk drive companies selling these monster
hard drives. In some cases, they have software you can install, to be
able to use more of the hard drive. Pretend to be in the market
for a 3TB drive, then look for an FAQ entries or support entries,
off the web page for the product. That's better than reading what
I provide below.

*******

Your GA MA785GMT is pretty modern, and a simplifying assumption is
a computer after about 2004, should be able to boot via MBR, with
up to a 2.2TB drive. That makes 2TB hard drives a very practical
purchase, with few limitations.

The fun begins once you go over 2.2TB. Booting the disk is the problem.
If the disk is used only for data, as a second drive, while a "tiny"
other hard drive does the booting, then that also allows more creative
solutions. For example, a small SSD used for booting, and a large
slow hard drive for data, might be a good combo.

You *can* actually boot from a 3TB drive, but some special conditions
would be needed. A combination of an EFI BIOS plus GPT partitioning
plus a pretty modern version of Windows, would do it. See
"Windows 32-bit versions" and additional sections, for some "yes/no"
tables for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

The software the disk drive company provides, solves the "I want to use
my new hard drive only for data purposes, not booting". The software
takes a 4TB drive, and breaks it into two or three pieces, each of which
is smaller than 2.2TB. The software is a driver, that converts a single
hard drive, into two or three "fake" hard drives. The OS thinks it has
multiple hard drives, and installs drivers for each fake. This is generally
a bad idea, because then, if you boot your Linux LiveCD, you may not be
able to see the data on there. Every OS needs the same solution, to
prevent damage.

I'm not aware of an actual DDO to solve this kind of problem. A
DDO would maintain the appearance of a single disk drive. But in this
case, I don't know if the concept would be valid. There'd probably
already be a DDO for this, if it was physically possible. The
"data drive only multiple hard drive" idea, is a poorer
solution, but it does allow the hard drive manufacturer to pretend
you got all the value from your new 2.2TB drive purchase. This idea worked,
for some of the smaller capacity barriers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay

There is one other trick that can be used. You can also run into
problems, if you build large RAID arrays. For example, if your
motherboard has Southbridge RAID software, you might be able to install a
RAID 0 across three 2TB hard drives. That would create a logical
volume of 6TB, with an MBR booting problem.

One Areca hardware RAID card ( cost $1000), solves the problem by re-declaring
the sector size of the hard drive, to be 4KB per sector, instead of the
traditional 512 bytes. You can boot from a 16TB RAID array, by using
a "fake" sector size, provided by the RAID controller hardware. The
emulation is done using the processor inside the RAID card.

The disk drive manufacturers have also done something similar. The drives
now, at least internally, use a 4KB sector size, as part of reducing the
overhead in the track layout on the platter.

"Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins 12/18/2009"

http://www.anandtech.com/print/2888

Many of the modern drives now (even the 500GB in my computer presently),
have 4KB sectors. If you used 32 bit MBR addressing, plus a 4KB sector
size, that too would break the 2.2TB capacity barrier, and give the same
16TB limit as the Areca hardware card has got. But at least one of the
manufacturers, uses "512e" emulation on top of that. For compatibility
with older OSes, the drive config info says "I'm a 512 byte sector drive",
and then internally, the drive handles the details of writing fractions
of a 4KB sector. I expect this makes mincemeat out of the cache RAM
inside the disk controller board. It also extracts a performance penalty.
If the drive seems slow, looking for a "4KB alignment" solution can help.

So then we'd also want to see a table, of what OSes have native
4KB sector support. And what OSes continue to only support 512 byte
drives. I think my WinXP is still limited to 512 byte sectors (and
a 512e type drive, that emulates 512 byte sectors, continues to work
fine - that's why my 500GB drive works OK).

Windows 7 received a patch, to allow 4KB native disks to be used.
Just to give you some idea, how "late to the party" this idea is.
But if the drive is 512e, instead of 4K, then I don't know if the
patch actually helps in that case. The thing is, there were a few
models of 4KB "pure" drives initially released, and I think
the situation has changed a bit since 2009. I don't know if a
jumper, could force a 512e drive into pure 4KB mode, for use
with this patch. I'm guessing if it worked, you could MBR boot
(no GPT partitioning), a large drive from Windows 7. GPT
booting from Windows 7, might only be feasible with an EFI
(or perhaps UEFI) BIOS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018

*******

Summary ?

Stick with 2TB, and you should be fine.

If it seems slow, "align it".

If you insist on making larger physical or logical volumes,
then... start reading web articles :-)

I have no first hand experience with any of this. My largest
drive is 500GB. I've just read a bit of this stuff, and
pass it on...

HTH,
Paul
  #3  
Old March 5th 12, 02:59 PM posted to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.gigabyte
Mike Skuczas
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2
Default Max HD size for GA MA785GMT motherboard

On 3/4/2012 10:48 PM, Paul wrote:
Mike Skuczas wrote:
As the title says, I would like to know what is the max size hard drive
I can install. Otherwise is the size determined by the OS? My OS is Win
&, 32 bit.

Mike Skuczas


One source of info, is the disk drive companies selling these monster
hard drives. In some cases, they have software you can install, to be
able to use more of the hard drive. Pretend to be in the market
for a 3TB drive, then look for an FAQ entries or support entries,
off the web page for the product. That's better than reading what
I provide below.

*******

Your GA MA785GMT is pretty modern, and a simplifying assumption is
a computer after about 2004, should be able to boot via MBR, with
up to a 2.2TB drive. That makes 2TB hard drives a very practical
purchase, with few limitations.

The fun begins once you go over 2.2TB. Booting the disk is the problem.
If the disk is used only for data, as a second drive, while a "tiny"
other hard drive does the booting, then that also allows more creative
solutions. For example, a small SSD used for booting, and a large
slow hard drive for data, might be a good combo.

You *can* actually boot from a 3TB drive, but some special conditions
would be needed. A combination of an EFI BIOS plus GPT partitioning
plus a pretty modern version of Windows, would do it. See
"Windows 32-bit versions" and additional sections, for some "yes/no"
tables for example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

The software the disk drive company provides, solves the "I want to use
my new hard drive only for data purposes, not booting". The software
takes a 4TB drive, and breaks it into two or three pieces, each of which
is smaller than 2.2TB. The software is a driver, that converts a single
hard drive, into two or three "fake" hard drives. The OS thinks it has
multiple hard drives, and installs drivers for each fake. This is generally
a bad idea, because then, if you boot your Linux LiveCD, you may not be
able to see the data on there. Every OS needs the same solution, to
prevent damage.

I'm not aware of an actual DDO to solve this kind of problem. A
DDO would maintain the appearance of a single disk drive. But in this
case, I don't know if the concept would be valid. There'd probably
already be a DDO for this, if it was physically possible. The
"data drive only multiple hard drive" idea, is a poorer
solution, but it does allow the hard drive manufacturer to pretend
you got all the value from your new2.2TB drive purchase. This idea worked,
for some of the smaller capacity barriers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay

There is one other trick that can be used. You can also run into
problems, if you build large RAID arrays. For example, if your
motherboard has Southbridge RAID software, you might be able to install a
RAID 0 across three 2TB hard drives. That would create a logical
volume of 6TB, with an MBR booting problem.

One Areca hardware RAID card ( cost $1000), solves the problem by re-declaring
the sector size of the hard drive, to be 4KB per sector, instead of the
traditional 512 bytes. You can boot from a 16TB RAID array, by using
a "fake" sector size, provided by the RAID controller hardware. The
emulation is done using the processor inside the RAID card.

The disk drive manufacturers have also done something similar. The drives
now, at least internally, use a 4KB sector size, as part of reducing the
overhead in the track layout on the platter.

"Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins 12/18/2009"

http://www.anandtech.com/print/2888

Many of the modern drives now (even the 500GB in my computer presently),
have 4KB sectors. If you used 32 bit MBR addressing, plus a 4KB sector
size, that too would break the 2.2TB capacity barrier, and give the same
16TB limit as the Areca hardware card has got. But at least one of the
manufacturers, uses "512e" emulation on top of that. For compatibility
with older OSes, the drive config info says "I'm a 512 byte sector drive",
and then internally, the drive handles the details of writing fractions
of a 4KB sector. I expect this makes mincemeat out of the cache RAM
inside the disk controller board. It also extracts a performance penalty.
If the drive seems slow, looking for a "4KB alignment" solution can help.

So then we'd also want to see a table, of what OSes have native
4KB sector support. And what OSes continue to only support 512 byte
drives. I think my WinXP is still limited to 512 byte sectors (and
a 512e type drive, that emulates 512 byte sectors, continues to work
fine - that's why my 500GB drive works OK).

Windows 7 received a patch, to allow 4KB native disks to be used.
Just to give you some idea, how "late to the party" this idea is.
But if the drive is 512e, instead of 4K, then I don't know if the
patch actually helps in that case. The thing is, there were a few
models of 4KB "pure" drives initially released, and I think
the situation has changed a bit since 2009. I don't know if a
jumper, could force a 512e drive into pure 4KB mode, for use
with this patch. I'm guessing if it worked, you could MBR boot
(no GPT partitioning), a large drive from Windows 7. GPT
booting from Windows 7, might only be feasible with an EFI
(or perhaps UEFI) BIOS.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018

*******

Summary ?

Stick with 2TB, and you should be fine.

If it seems slow, "align it".

If you insist on making larger physical or logical volumes,
then... start reading web articles :-)

I have no first hand experience with any of this. My largest
drive is 500GB. I've just read a bit of this stuff, and
pass it on...

HTH,
Paul

Thanks for the info Paul.
 




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