Hard Drive capacity and Windows XP

[gulabg]

What is the maximum capacity of external hard drive that Windows XP sp2 can adress?
Many thanks
Gulab

 

[cliffordcooley]

You should consider updating to SP3.

The "Max Volume Size" depends on the partition type and in some cases whether third party drivers are installed.

NTFS compared to FAT and FAT32
NTFS vs FAT vs exFAT
What are the maximum volume sizes and maximum file sizes for the various Windows file systems?

 

[gbhall]

My guess would be that the maximum size of the device you are concerned about is NOT determined by the OS you are using. You are talking, are you not, about a USB-attached drive ? Such a drive would internally almost certainly be a SATA design, and come already formatted NTFS. Whatever size it claims to be will be what you see.

Cliffordcooley is right to warn you that XP SP3 introduced several important changes to the NTFS file structure and also to USB handling.

What would possibly be of more concern to you is that your USB ports will probably only support USB2 speeds, which will be about 35Mb/sec, and only for the initial burst. A typical transfer rate will be roughly 15 to 20 Mb/sec. That does not 'feel' very fast, compared to an internally-connected drive. However, a USB3 device can be connected to a USB2 port, no problem there.

 

[SNGX1275]

From a more philosophical standpoint (since you specifically mentioned SP2). You shouldn't be online with it. SP3 is 'great' I'm sure, but it is an old and unsupported OS. So, IMO, if you are on that old of hardware where you can't upgrade to SP3, then skip SP2 or hell even SP1, just run straight XP or even 2k with sp4.

2kSP4 is going to be solid and very lightweight, and you can 3rd party firewalls and virus protection if you must be online.

Bottom line is, if you can't run XP SP3, that machine probably shouldn't be used online anymore. Its 2014, XP came out in 2001.

 

[gulabg]

Many thanks for your comments.
I think the best solution is to get a new computer and start all over again.
Best regards,
Gulab

 

[gbhall]

That would be a sensible thing to do. I personally would go for a Win 7 pro 64-bit version. To me Win 8 is just a toy, I'm not remotely interested. It is possible that Win 9 next year will be better, but I'm not betting on it.