3 TB hard drive available for old computers

Now in the HD era, large-capacity hard disks are required to store HD movies of P. It is not a problem for new users to use a 3 TB hard disk, but it is troublesome for old users who are still in Windows XP. The maximum capacity that can only support TB is really not enough, however, we only need to make a slight subtotal so that the old computer can use the complete 3 TB hard disk. 

Limitations of using a 3 TB Hard Disk

Windows XP computers are generally relatively old. The bios of the old motherboard supports MBR partitioning, and the maximum size is TB, to remove a 3 TB hard disk from this limit, convert it to a GPT partition. However, the 32-bit Windows XP commonly used by users does not support reading and writing GPT partitions. If you want to use a 3 TB hard disk as a data slave disk, you must use Windows Vista/7 or 64-bit Windows XP. Various systems support 3 TB hard disks as shown in the following table.

 

	Data Disk	System Disk
Windows XP 32-bit	GPT not supported	GPT not supported
Windows XP 64-bit	GPT supported	GPT not supported
Windows Vista 32-bit	GPT supported	GPT not supported
Windows Vista 64-bit	GPT supported	Support for GPT (uefi bios required)
Windows 7 32-bit	GPT supported	GPT not supported
Windows 7 64-bit	GPT supported	Support for GPT (uefi bios required)

Replace the core file of Windows XP

Because Windows 2003 sp2 32-bit system supports reading and writing GPT partitions (only data disks can be used), we can use its core system file disk. sys replaces the corresponding files in Windows XP, so that the Windows XP SP3 32-bit system supports GPT partitioning (data disk), so that all the capacity of the 3 TB hard disk can be identified and used. 

First, copy the disk. SYS file from the c: \ windows \ system32 \ DRIVERS directory of Windows 2003 sp2 32-bit system and enter the safe mode of Windows XP. Replace disk. sys is not as simple as copying and pasting. It is the core file of windows that is strictly protected by the system. If we use another disk. sys replaces this file, and Windows XP uses the original disk in the installation package. sys overwrites the replaced file, and the replacement fails. 

Therefore, you must replace the original file in the installation package in advance. There are three places with disk. sys. First, in the sp3.cab file under the C: \ WINDOWS \ driver cache \ i386 directory (1), decompress it, and use disk of Windows 2003. replace the disk in the decompressed directory with sys. sys original file, and then use the cab file for managementProgram(Such as powerarvhiver) re-package and overwrite the original sp3.cab.

The second is to replace the disk. SYS file in the c: \ windows \ system32 \ dllcache directory with the disk. SYS file of Windows 2003. Third, you can delete or rename the drivers. cab file in the c: \ windows \ driver cache \ directory.

Finally, replace disk. sys of Windows 2003 with disk. sys (2) in the c: \ windows \ system32 \ DRIVERS directory. Restart the computer and replace it successfully.

The next step is to convert a 3 TB hard disk to a GPT partition, but the Disk Manager of Windows XP does not have this function. In this case, you need to use disk tools such as diskgenius.

Run diskgenius. In the disk device list on the left of the main interface, right-click the 3 TB hard disk to be formatted, and select "Convert Partition Table type to guid format" (3) in the pop-up menu ). The confirmation box is displayed, and click "OK" to go to the conversion step.

You also need to set the conversion parameters first. You can set the number of partitions according to your needs. Be sure to check the option "alignment partition to the integer multiple of this sector, otherwise, the disk performance will be greatly reduced in Windows XP.

After setting the parameters, click "OK" and set the file system to "NTFS" on the formatting parameter interface. Then, click "format" to start conversion. Restart your computer, and Windows XP will be able to fully support 3 TB hard disks.

Edit opinion:

WE do not recommend that you format a hard disk with GPT partition on Windows Vista/7, as a result, a hidden MSR partition will be added. It is a special reserved partition of Microsoft and is placed on the front end of the disk for disk acceleration, but it is meaningless for data disks, on the contrary, hard disks are prone to bad sectors due to excessive read/write requests.