Hard drive partition sizes above 2 TB

[drdoom]

If I get a 3 TB Hard Drive will I be able to use the whole thing with 32 bit XP by simply making 2 partitions? Also, if I use it in a Linux server will my XP computers have any problems access the whole drive if I use a 3 TB ext4 partition?

[James]

You will be able to use the entire storage capacity that way yes. However, you will not be able to boot from it.

As for linux, that would work too, just create a CIFS/SMB mount from your linux box.

[Nabby]

If you don't want to partition it then go ahead and to an ext4 partition on Linux. You can then configure samba on the Linux system to share the drive out to Windows systems.

If you plan on moving this drive between machines physically then Ext4 is not a good idea because windows can't read it. Also, if you want to view the full drive space as a single drive in Windows it needs to be a GPT partition but windows XP 32bit cannot read this. In this scenario 2 partitions in Fat32 may be your only real option. Issue here is that you are limited to individual file sizes of no greater then 4GB. There are ways to get Linux to read/write to NTFS/exFat but never really tried it myself.

[drdoom]

I have a microserver which I thought was going to have 4 open bays but it turned out one of them is taken by the SSD that came with it. So it only has 3 open bays. I was going to use 2 TB drives but with one less bay I decided to go with bigger drives. The drives will not be moved once they are installed in the server. They are mostly going to be used to stream media. I am going to need some assistance setting up the drives to share. I've tried it with a flash drive but couldn't figure out how to do it.

[Nabby]

I have a microserver which I thought was going to have 4 open bays but it turned out one of them is taken by the SSD that came with it. So it only has 3 open bays. I was going to use 2 TB drives but with one less bay I decided to go with bigger drives. The drives will not be moved once they are installed in the server. They are mostly going to be used to stream media. I am going to need some assistance setting up the drives to share. I've tried it with a flash drive but couldn't figure out how to do it.

What operating system exactly? Are you going to be using Raid? If so hardware or software Raid?

[drdoom]

I was going to use Linux Mint 13 LTS. I'm having a boot issue at the moment but I just haven't had time to address it. I might have to reinstall. There will be no RAID involved.

[Nabby]

The following article seems to be pretty comprehensive. Pick it up just under half way down where it shows the section called: Configuring Linux Mint:

http://www.liberiangeek.net/2010/04/...nd-linux-mint/

[drdoom]

Thanks for the link. As soon as I get the boot issue resolved I will review the article. If I can't figure it out I'll get back to you. I'm still thinking about what drives to get.