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Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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Wouldn't changing the sector size give you a larger partition size?  The
LBA addressing fields (start of partition and partition length in
sectors) in partition record won't change from 4 bytes each (2^32 for
4,294,967,296 addresses) but you end up addressing larger sized sectors.  

As I recall, advanced format HDDs were first supported in Windows Vista.
Alas, the OP has Windows XP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format

Would Windows XP work with a 512e advanced format HDD?  The external
interface would still be addressing via 512-byte sectors but the drive
itself would be using 4096-byte sectors.  What would be the point of
using 4096-byte physical sectors on the platter if only 512 bytes of
each larger sector was all the drive would deliver?  The physical sector
size would be larger but you can only get 512 bytes out of each sector?
I suspect this requires usurping the MBR bootstrap code with a
translation utility.  

4K native advanced format drives don't need the emulation layer.  So
you'd still have the 2^32 bit addressing limit for the LBA fields in the
MBR's partition records but each address would be accessing a 4 KB
sector instead of a 512 byte sector.  Vista, and later, can use 4 KB
sized sectors so, even when limited to using the old MBR scheme with its
partition record for LBA maxed to 2^32 addresses, the partition can be a
lot bigger.  Again, not supported back in Windows XP.  While the old MBR
scheme with drives using 4096-byte sized sectors will allow for larger
partition sizes, Windows XP has in it a hardcoded 512-byte sector size.

The situation is the hardware even with the old MBR scheme can support
larger partitions but the OS (Windows XP) does not.  A limitation of the
software, not of the hardware.  However ... could the OP use a dynamic
volume to increase partition size in Windows XP?  The dynamic volume
would span multiple partitions.  As I recall, anything RAID-like is not
supported by Windows on its own OS partition.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/askcore/archive/2010/02/18/understanding-the-2-tb-limit-in-windows-storage.aspx
"... convert your disks to dynamic disks and create volume sets."

Apparently NTFS 3.1 appeared in Windows XP and used thereafter and it
has a 2^32-1 limit in the number clusters it can address, and cluster
size is affected by sector size.  Change sector size (512 bytes to 4096
bytes) and you up the size of the cluster.  The same number of addresses
(fixed in the OS, well, its file system) but bigger clusters gives
bigger partitions.  For example, the /A:size argument to format.exe sets
the cluster size.  Knowing Microsoft, maybe you can't use that on the OS
partition.  Awhile back, changing sector or cluster size can screw up
some disk/partitioning utilities.  I don't know if that's still the
situation.

Alas, not only does the OS limit the number of clusters it can address
but it also limits on which editions of Windows where dynamic volumes
are supported.  See:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/11339

However, the table shows Windows XP whether Home or Pro will support
spanning for a dynamic volume.  Since this software-based RAID, I
suspect Microsoft won't let you do it on its OS partition.  As I recall,
when I looked at getting a larger partition under Windows XP, I could
not software-based RAID spanning on the OS partition (since the
"software" was Windows) I had to setup hardware-based RAID spanning
either before installing Windows or afterward by installing to a regular
(basic) partition and then cloning it into a hardware-based RAID spanned
volume and switch the drives.  That was so long ago that I forget the
magic needed to get Windows on a hardware-based RAID spanned volume.
Yet:

http://www.hdd-tool.com/raid/how-to-create-dynamic-disk-volumes.htm

says "Dynamic disks are not supported on portable computers or on
Windows XP Home Edition-based computers."  So maybe Acronis' table need
updating to show only the Pro edition supports dynamic volumes.  Not
until Windows 7 did I get stuck with a Home edition.  Always had the Pro
edition before.  I remember reading or hearing users claim they got
beyond the 2 TB partition limit despite they were using Windows XP and
BIOS and the MBR scheme.  It's doable but do you want to bother to do?

Luckily the OP bought a drive with a capacity that exceeds the 2 TB
partition size using 512-byte sectors in both the file system cluster
size and cluster addressing and the 2^32 addressing limit in the MBR
partition record.

BTW, thanks for your prior corrections.

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Thread

Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-10 19:20 +0100
  Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Chronos <usenet@chronos.org.uk> - 2015-09-10 19:50 +0100
    Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-10 20:11 +0100
      Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-10 20:46 +0100
        Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-10 21:07 +0100
          Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Chronos <usenet@chronos.org.uk> - 2015-09-10 22:10 +0100
          Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2015-09-11 00:22 +0100
      Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2015-09-11 00:16 +0100
        Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-11 07:16 +0100
          Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Daniel James <daniel@me.invalid> - 2015-09-11 15:17 +0100
          Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Shadow <Sh@dow.br> - 2015-09-11 11:30 -0300
          Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Mark Perkins <mark@none.invalid> - 2015-09-11 09:35 -0500
            Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Mike Tomlinson <mike@jasper.org.uk> - 2015-09-11 21:22 +0100
  Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Shadow <Sh@dow.br> - 2015-09-10 16:18 -0300
    Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-10 21:08 +0100
  Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Ed Light <nobody@nobody.there> - 2015-09-10 14:30 -0700
  Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD micky <NONONOmisc07@bigfoot.com> - 2015-09-10 21:17 -0400
    Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-11 07:23 +0100
  Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-10 21:11 -0500
    Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Daniel James <daniel@me.invalid> - 2015-09-11 15:17 +0100
      Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-12 05:18 -0500
        Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Daniel James <daniel@me.invalid> - 2015-09-12 20:46 +0100
          Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2015-09-14 04:14 -0500
            Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Daniel James <daniel@me.invalid> - 2015-09-14 13:03 +0100
            Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Mark Perkins <mark@none.invalid> - 2015-09-14 21:10 -0500
  Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Daniel James <daniel@me.invalid> - 2015-09-11 15:17 +0100
    Re: Cannot access new Seagate external HD Terry Pinnell <me@somewhere.invalid> - 2015-09-12 07:05 +0100

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