All hard drive manufacturers have announced the first wave of 3TB (that’s 3 Terabytes) hard drives in the first half of 2010, and first 3TB hard drives like the Western Digital Caviar Green WD30EZRSDTL 3TB are now available.
These high capacity hard drives will work fine for users running Windows Vista, Windows 7 or a Windows Server 2008 operating system. Windows XP users will however notice that they cannot use all of the space of the hard drive. Why? Because the operating system cannot address disk space beyond the 2 Terabyte limit. That’s roughly one third of space that cannot be used.
An alternative is an advanced partitioning scheme like GUID Partition Table (GPT) which can support 3TB volumes. The problem however is that GPT is not supported by Windows XP.
Paragon however came up with a solution. They basically create a specially signed driver to make Windows XP compatible with the GPT partitioning scheme. With this in place, Windows XP users can utilize the full storage of 3TB hard drives.
There are a few limitations though, but the solution nevertheless is the only available one to use all 3 Terabytes of hard drive space on Windows XP. The major limitation of this method is that the 3TB hard drive cannot be the system partition. The full 3 Terabytes are only available if the hard drive is installed as a secondary drive. Other limitations include incompatibility with RAID setups and external 3TB hard drives.
After installation and reboot of the system the GPT partitioning scheme needs to be created on the 3 Terabyte drive. This is done by clicking on Hard Disk in the menubar and selecting Convert to GPT hard disk from the context menu.
Full access to all 3 Terabytes is provided afterwards. It is then possible to use Windows tools to manage the hard drive, or the Paragon GPT Disk Manager. The disk manager offers options to partition the hard drive among other features.
Paragon GPT Loader Download and Compatibility
Paragon GTP Loader is currently available free of charge as part of Paragon’s Early Adopter program. The program has been developed for Windows XP, and users of other Microsoft operating systems have no benefit of running the software (as their systems support 3TB drives). The Paragon GTP Loader download link will be sent to the email address used in the registration for the early adopters program. The same email contains a link to the product guide in pdf format.
Enjoyed the article?: Then sign-up for our free newsletter or RSS feed to kick off your day with the latest technology news and tips, or share the article with your friends and contacts on Facebook or Twitter.Related Articles:
Free Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8How To Clean Hard Drives In Windows 7
Speed up Hard Drives under Windows Vista
Solid State Hard Drives
Free Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.0 Special Edition
With regards to the statement, “…but the solution nevertheless is the only available one to use all 3 Terabytes of hard drive space on Windows XP.”:
According to Microsoft Corporation ( http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/gpt-on-x64.mspx ) Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 should have support for GPT disks.
Such support is probably not a unique feature of the Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 kernel, and such feature is likely applicable to Windows XP Service Pack 2 (possibly also Windows XP with Service Pack 1) through manual or script installation or integration into the Windows XP setup. Any related Windows Server 2003 drivers would probably be unsigned on Windows XP.
With the GPT partitioning scheme written on the hard drive, will it be possible to access files on the drive using Vista or Windows 7?
Vista and later seem to support this natively, see http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/gpt_faq.mspx
Does it mean there is not hardware limitation on using 3Tb on olders pc running xp. I mean if I split 3Tb into 2 logical disks, it can be used (also bootable) on windows xp?
This driver is only is needed on XP 32-bit, as XP64 supports drives larger than 2TB natively:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463525.aspx
@ A Mulder:
are you sure the driver’s for Win XP 32 bit? I cannot find it in the link indicated by you, just countless questions and answers about how to make it work in 64bit operating systems.
I just purchased a WD Caviar Green 2.5TB in my the intention to use it as a secondary drive.
I use Win XP SP3 and the HDD is detected but only as 280GB…
I really need a fix… if there is any available.
@Cutarescu
see in the given page the following Q/A:
Q: How big can a GPT disk be?
A:
-> Windows XP and the original release of Windows Server 2003 have a limit of 2TB per physical disk
===> thus 32 bit does not support >2TB natively and the paragon driver is needed
-> Windows Server 2003 SP1, Windows XP x64 edition, and later versions, the maximum raw partition of 18 exabytes can be supported. (Windows file systems currently are limited to 256 terabytes each.)
===> thus 64 bit supports >2TB natively and no additional driver is needed
are you sure you have 64bit version of XP? if not then the/an additional driver is needed
I have Win XP 64 bit Professional
Just bought 3TB WD Caviar Green,
Only shows 2 Partitions at first. Tried to play with test and make work,.
now I only have
1 Part = 48 GB
2 Part = 1999 GB
3 Part = 768 GB
The third no matter what I do, I can’t delete,
can’t partitiion, can’t shrink / resize, only remains 768 unallocated space.
And ye it is
AMD x2 Athlon
SATA 3 Controller Pci card
ASUS Motherboard A8N VM-CSM
4gb Ram
Other WD Drives
160 BLue
2 1TB Caviar Black
and still no fix.
I deletedall Partitions and trie to recreate from unallocated space, no results.
Best I can do is 48gb and 1,999gb.
So obviously it is not native to XP 64 bit Professional.
Any help?
I also tried under Win 7 64 Ultimate. same thing.
will, did you create the partitions using GPT?
according to this XP64 does support datadisks using GPT
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table#Windows_x64_64-bit_versions
faq about gpt:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463525
how to create gpt partitions:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/guid_partition_table.mspx?mfr=true
I just bought a 3TB WD Green drive. I wanted to install on my Win XP 32 bit system as a data drive. I read and re read then downloaded Paragon Migrate to UEFI files. It keeps talking about Win 7 64 bit. I tried to install anyway and it tells me it will not work with this OS (Win XP 32). What am I doing wrong?
Thank you
Doug
Doug, Paragon since then has removed the program from the Early Adopters page. It is now a commercial program, the web page is here: http://www.paragon-software.com/technologies/components/gpt-loader/