Do ICH9R boards support >2TB HDDs?

[VirtualLarry]

OS is Windows 7 64-bit, which supports GPT.

 

[denis280]

I think 2tb is the limit.

 

[Cerb]

Without EUFI boot, an MBR 2TB volume is the max you can use for the OS.

With 512B sectors, you can use a drive up to 128PB in size, though, as a non-OS drive. That size support has existed since ATA 100 was implemented, so that should be the lowest limit for any SATA controller (I'm not sure if a newer controller is needed for 4K sectors, which would mean 1EB at 48-bit).

Perfect excuse for an OS SSD drive, right?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Without EUFI boot, an MBR 2TB volume is the max you can use for the OS.

With 512B sectors, you can use a drive up to 128PB in size, though, as a non-OS drive. That size support has existed since ATA 100 was implemented, so that should be the lowest limit for any SATA controller (I'm not sure if a newer controller is needed for 4K sectors, which would mean 1EB at 48-bit).

Perfect excuse for an OS SSD drive, right?

Well, in an ideal world, with unhindered 48-bit LBA support, that would be true. But sometimes there are bugs in implementations that limit things. Just wondering if anyone had some real-world experience using a larger HDD (with AF) with an ICH9R board as a data drive in Windows 7.

Was also thinking of using two of them to mirror. Would I be better off using RST drivers (and wouldn't I have to stick with older driver releases? I thought that the driver had to be matched to the OROM version?), or would I be better off creating a GPT dynamic disc set in Windows, and creating an OS-level mirror? (Can I even do that with Home Premium?)

 

[lamedude]

No problems with a 3TB data drive on x58/ICH10R.

 

[aigomorla]

yes...

as long as ur not booting up from it.
windows should see the 3TB drive as a GPT.

Your not going to be able to see it as a MBR tho, unless u have a board which supports bootup at greater then 3TB.

 

[TourGuide]

yes...

as long as ur not booting up from it.
windows should see the 3TB drive as a GPT.

Your not going to be able to see it as a MBR tho, unless u have a board which supports bootup at greater then 3TB.

True, and even then you will sometimes run into problems. With a UEFI bios you are supposed to be able to boot from a GPT partition - I have all the requirements, x64, UEFI, etc. and I could not get it to work - no matter what. I spent quite a bit of time trying, reading up, trying again - I just could not get Win7x64 to install on a GPT partition. Really made me mad.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Yes it supports 2TB+.

For a second non boot drive. No problem at all.

For a boot drive, you need an UEFI BIOS so you can boot from GPT partitions.

 

[aigomorla]

True, and even then you will sometimes run into problems. With a UEFI bios you are supposed to be able to boot from a GPT partition - I have all the requirements, x64, UEFI, etc. and I could not get it to work - no matter what. I spent quite a bit of time trying, reading up, trying again - I just could not get Win7x64 to install on a GPT partition. Really made me mad.

u need to go inside administrator tools, under disk management and then set the GPT partition there.

If you done that, and still cant get the drive to work... theres option 2.
Take the drive to another PC which u know has no problem setting up GPT partitions..

Set the partition there, and then migrate it back to the system u want the drive on.

 

[Dufus]

IIRC OROM 10.5 and above for >2TB.

FWIW it is possible to boot GPT with pure legacy board (no EFI), well via a separate MBR disk.

 

[mv2devnull]

FWIW it is possible to boot GPT with pure legacy board (no EFI), well via a separate MBR disk.

"via MBR disk" as in "from separate disk" or as in "from pseudo-MBR of GPT"?

If the former, then one does not "boot GPT", even though the OS can be installed on GPT volume.

In the latter, the sector 0 of the disk looks like MBR although in reality it is GPT. This allows the legacy BIOS to load a legacy bootloader.

 

[Dufus]

As in a separate disk. GPT is just a partitioning scheme, let's not confuse this with EFI booting which uses bootmgr.efi and winload.efi, it is legacy booting of GPT.

I normally use GPT with UEFI but had some testing to do with trim support for RAID0 SSD's using ICH10R using a legacy only board and it was easier to boot an existing Windows installation that was originally installed UEFI and GPT than mess around converting to MBR.

You can see in the pic that the Windows boot drive C: is on the GPT disk and in this case it is partitioned as such without any MBR partition tables for the systems on the GPT disk, just the usual protected table entry.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The GPT boot part needing UEFI is not a hardware limitation, its a OS limitation.

And saying you boot from a MBR is the same as having 2 disks.

 

[mv2devnull]

Using the Microsoft terminology, boot procedure starts from a "System volume". BIOS/UEFI and first part of bootloader dictate what kind of volume is required.

The "hardware-specific files that are needed to start OS" dictate where the "Boot volume" can be. As shown, it can very well be on GPT drive.

System volume

The system volume refers to the disk volume that contains the hardware-specific files that are needed to start Windows, such as Ntldr, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com.

On computers that are running the Intel x86 line of CPU processors and later versions, the system volume must be a primary volume that is marked as active. This requirement can be fulfilled on any drive on the computer that the system BIOS searches when the operating system starts.

The system volume can be the same volume as the boot volume. However, this configuration is not required.

Boot volume

The boot volume refers to the disk volume that contains the Windows operating system files and the supporting files. By default, the Windows operating system files are in the WINDOWS folder, and the supporting files are in the WINDOWS\System32 folder.

The boot volume can be the same volume as the system volume. However, this configuration is not required.

There is only one system volume. However, there is one boot volume for each operating system in a multiboot system.

Older example: a (Pentium Pro) motherboard could not cope with a 20GB drive. I had "System volume" (and /boot) on a smaller drive. Then I had a 80GB drive for the "boot volumes". OS(s) ignored BIOS limitations.

 

[Dufus]

Sounds very similar mv2devnull.

Just to add, with a legacy board the method of loading is for the BIOS to load the first sector (MBR) of the selected disk. This contains loader code and partition table to load the active partition which points to the first sector of the volume which in turn contains boot loader code to load the system. With a typical GPT disk, as used in the above post, there is no loader code on protective MBR and no partition tables for the volumes in the MBR, just the protective table.

So in this case we load the bootmgr from the first disk which has the normal legacy MBR, this volume also contains the BCD. Then I guess the bootmgr does it's magic and reads the GPT disk and loads the Windows system on the GPT. Voila, booting a volume on GPT without UEFI from a board that has legacy BIOS. The bootmgr used was W8, don't know if that makes a difference.

Of course it's a roundabout way of doing things and will not be suitable for most but a few small cases, such as my own used for testing trim on ICH10R.