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What are the hard disk size limits of modern motherboards?
I want to have a video archive of 1600gb using four 400gb hard disks on a raid. Does anybody know whether most motherboards can handle that or can anybody suggest a motherboard that can? Can Win XP Pro handle that?
Thanks in advance for your help
Peter
Persoanlly, I think you'd be better off going external for at least some of your storage
Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @ 8.5 x 200MHz
768MB PC3200 2.5-3-3-7
Asus A9550GE/TD 128MB
WinME/WinXP Pro
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The 137GB per drive is the only limit that you have to worry about with current motherboards. As mentioned above check www.48bitLBA.com for more information.
Check the motherboard that you are interested in buying to see if it has 48bit LBA capability.
I'm sure WinXP Pro will handle it with the right Microsoft upgrade.
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So I could have four 400gb drives but I'd have to split them to 133gb partitions with a 48bit LBA compatible motherboard?
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If the motherboard/drive controllers can perform 48-bit LBA and you're using XP SP1 or newer, your drives' full capacities will be available.
Just thinking of putting so much storage into a general-use machine gives me the willies, probably because I tinker with my main rig all the time. I would explore external storage of some sort before I'd setup a huge RAID5 array in my personal machine. I think USB/Firewire enclosures, drive drawers, or a dedicated junk box with a decent SATA RAID controller and GbE are alternatives you might consider.
"If it ain't broke, upgrade anyway."
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Yes, as long as your system is 48bit LBA capable, any size drive will be useable. You 'can' use them as 400GB.
I respectfully disagree with the above worry about the size of the drives. My feeling is that the more drives and storage space that you have, the more flexibility for backups you have.
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I have been looking at the lacie external drives, but I am also worried about putting so much storage in a normal machine, partly because I've never seen it done before in a desktop and also because the motherboard manufacturers sites don't say that they you can do it, but they don't say you can't either!
My worry about the external storage is that it's more expensive per gigabyte and I worry about 'putting all my eggs in one basket.'
Ideally I'd use a raid tower but the whole idea of this is trying to find a cheap alternative to the problem (around £800 ($1400) max).
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