Windows support for hard disks that are larger than 2 TB https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2581408/windows-support-for-...

Windows support
for hard disks that
are larger than 2 TB
Applies to: Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition,
Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft
Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition (32-bit
x86), More

Summary

In order for an operating system to fully

support storage devices that have capacities
that exceed 2 terabytes (2 TB, or 2 trillion
bytes), the device must be initialized by using
the GUID partition table (GPT) partitioning
scheme. This scheme supports addressing of
the full range of storage capacity. If the user
intends to start the computer from one of
these large disks, the system’s base firmware
interface must use the Unified Extensible
Firmware Interface (UEFI) and not BIOS.

This article outlines Microsoft support across

all Windows versions since Windows XP. It
also describes the requirements to address
the full storage capability of these devices.

Note that this article refers to disk capacity in

powers of two instead of powers of 10, which
is the more common designation on storage
device capacity labels. Therefore, references
to “2 TB” actually refer to a product that is
labeled as having “2.2 TB” of capacity.

Also note that the operating system-specific

behavior that is noted in this article also
applies to the server variants of that system.
Therefore, a reference to “Windows 7”
includes Windows Server 2008 R2, “Windows
Vista” includes Windows Server 2008, and

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Windows support for hard disks that are larger than 2 TB https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2581408/windows-support-for-...

“Windows XP” includes Windows Server 2003

and Windows Server 2003 R2.

More Information

The management of modern storage devices

is addressed by using a scheme called Logical
Block Addressing (LBA). This is the
arrangement of the logical sectors
that constitute the media. "LBA0" represents
the first logical sector of the device, and the
last LBA designation represents the last
logical sector of the device, one label per
sector. To determine the capacity of the
storage device, you multiply the number of
logical sectors within the device by the size of
each logical sector. The current size standard
is 512 bytes. For example, to achieve a device
that has a capacity of 2 TB, you must have
3,906,250,000 512-byte sectors. However, a
computer system requires 32 bits (1s and 0s)
of information to represent this large number.
Therefore, any storage capacity that is greater
than what can be represented by using 32
bits would require an additional bit. That is,
33 bits.

The problem in this computation is that the

partitioning scheme that is used by most
modern Windows-based computers is MBR
(master boot record). This scheme sets a limit
of 32 for the number of bits that are available
to represent the number of logical sectors.

The 2-TB barrier is the result of this 32-bit

limitation. Because the maximum number
that can be represented by using 32-bits is
4,294,967,295, this translates to 2.199 TB of
capacity by using 512-byte sectors
(approximately 2.2 TB). Therefore, a capacity
beyond 2.2 TB is not addressable by using the
MBR partitioning scheme.

To make more bits available for addressing,

the storage device must be initialized by

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