Paragon GPT Loader lets 3TB drives work under Windows XP

[Fraud OS 11]

Paragon GPT Loader lets 3TB drives work under Windows XP

Nov. 3, 2010 (3:35 pm) By: Matthew Humphries

Many users are continuing to use Windows XP instead of upgrading to Windows 7 mainly because they don't believe the upgrade is necessary. Depending on what you use your PC for that may be the case, but as technology moves forward XP begins to come up short in some areas.

One such area is that of storage space on hard drives. Windows XP can only recognize hard drives up to 2.2TB in size. 3TB drives are now becoming commonplace, and eventually they will become the most cost effective and easiest to source drives.

So where does this leave XP users? 3TB+ drives can be used with an XP system, but only 2.2TB of space will be usable meaning you are paying for storage you'll never be able to use. However, Paragon Software claims to have a solution in the form of the Paragon GPT Loader.

GPTL consists of a special driver that adds support for GUID Partition Tables under Windows XP. That means a 3TB+ drive can be installed with all of its storage space usable. There are a few caveats, though. GPTL will only work on drives that do not contain the Windows operating system for your machine, so any 3TB drive would have to form a secondary storage drive. There is also no provision for using RAID or having the drive as external to your machine.

Even with those limitations this may be the simplest way to increase storage with the latest hard drives under Windows XP. The good news is it's currently free to download and use GPTL through Paragon's Early Adopter Program.

Read more at the Paragon Software press release

[Ace]

If XP users can afford 3TB HDDs, they should have no problem paying for Windows 7.

[Rudy]

If XP users can afford 3TB HDDs, they should have no problem paying for Windows 7.

Uh....way to completely miss the point :rolleyes:

[GayWolf]

Uh....way to completely miss the point :rolleyes:

He's just here to promote "something", and try to create a stereotype that Windows XP users are cheap.

[Ace]

Rudy. Did you miss the list of caveats? The only way to overcome these is by upgrading to Windows 7. Duh!

There are a few caveats, though. GPTL will only work on drives that do not contain the Windows operating system for your machine, so any 3TB drive would have to form a secondary storage drive. There is also no provision for using RAID or having the drive as external to your machine.

[Raa]

Actually I think the point is valid. If you're going to get a 3TB drive, there's a large chance you should be using Windows 7.

[Ci7]

it is clear from the article that you can't boot from this drive anyway , if you gonna use this method

that would need also UEFI, anyway

---

just wait until they change sector size for HDD, say good bye for grumpy OS !

edit:

this thing is in beta/preview sure it would be great idea to keep your data with it

[Fraud OS 11]

Did you miss the list of caveats? The only way to overcome these is by upgrading to Windows 7. Duh!

There are no caveats for data partitions. If you want to boot from a GPT drive only on an EFI system (which are hardly mainstream), you would need 64-bit Vista or Windows 7 (even 32-bit Windows 7 doesn't support that) but that limitation might also be addressed sooner or later by Paragon for all 32-bit OSes. This essentially brings 32-bit XP up to the same level of GPT support as XP x64 or Server 2003 x64.

And even if they change the sector size, manufacturers like Seagate emulate 512 k sectors and are incorporating logic in the circuit board for oldes OSes to work around in their logic board or they would see drop in their own product's sales.

Point is, industry always works around limitations if the OS is in use by the mass market. I personally would use such large drives only for storing data and use an SSD for the OS.

[Ci7]

And even if they change the sector size, manufacturers like Seagate emulate 512 k sectors and are incorporating logic in the circuit board for oldes OSes to work around in their logic board or they would see drop in their own product's sales.

how so?

most pc now a day are sold with Win7

and most sales goes with OEMs

so.....

i don't see the point of putting huge harddrive in obsolate pc platform (e.g. P4s )

[Rudy]

i don't see the point of putting huge harddrive in obsolate pc platform (e.g. P4s )

Lots of people are also running Core 2 Duo cpus with XP :/

[Fraud OS 11]

Rudy, can you explain or show what components of Windows 7 exactly make use of multiple cores or what APIs, interfaces or frameworks does it offer to app developers to write more efficient multi core apps? You can get quad cores or octo cores and happily compute on XP. W7 does nothing multiCORE specific to accelerate any component. Do you not know you have to write code specifically to get advantage of multi-cores? Almost everyone seems to have this false impression that W7 and Vista have some magical wonderful "multiprocessor support". Now what that better multiprocessor support is, I don't see anywhere documented on MSDN. There's Parallel Patterns Library for native code and ParallelFX for .NET which is Visual Studio features available on all OSes for which you can compile. No OS play is involved. IE9 is the only app that I know whose Chakra engine takes advantage of multiple cores.

[Rudy]

Rudy, can you explain or show what components of Windows 7 exactly make use of multiple cores or what APIs, interfaces or frameworks does it offer to app developers to write more efficient multi core apps? You can get quad cores or octo cores and happily compute on XP. W7 does nothing multiCORE specific to accelerate any component. Do you not know you have to write code specifically to get advantage of multi-cores? Almost everyone seems to have this false impression that W7 and Vista have some magical wonderful "multiprocessor support". Now what that better multiprocessor support is, I don't see anywhere documented on MSDN. There's Parallel Patterns Library for native code and ParallelFX for .NET which is Visual Studio features available on all OSes for which you can compile. No OS play is involved.

Uh? My point is that XP still has a place in today's computers, sure Win7 can do a lot of things but XP will satisfy most people's needs

[ahhell]

Rudy, can you explain or show what components of Windows 7 exactly make use of multiple cores or what APIs, interfaces or frameworks does it offer to app developers to write more efficient multi core apps? You can get quad cores or octo cores and happily compute on XP. W7 does nothing multiCORE specific to accelerate any component. Do you not know you have to write code specifically to get advantage of multi-cores? Almost everyone seems to have this false impression that W7 and Vista have some magical wonderful "multiprocessor support". Now what that better multiprocessor support is, I don't see anywhere documented on MSDN. There's Parallel Patterns Library for native code and ParallelFX for .NET which is Visual Studio features available on all OSes for which you can compile. No OS play is involved. IE9 is the only app that I know whose Chakra engine takes advantage of multiple cores.

So what exactly does your wordy rant have to do with 3GB drives?

:rolleyes:

[Fraud OS 11]

So what exactly does your wordy rant have to do with 3GB drives?

Rant? What rant? I asked a genuine question. :) You would need to read the all the posts in a thread, you know, so you will understand how the posts relate to each other. :p

[Ci7]

So what exactly does your wordy rant have to do with 3TB drives?

:rolleyes:

you missed that

[Subject Delta]

I think the point simply needs to be driven home, that if you want to continue using the latest hardware the way it was designed to be used, you need to use the latest operating systems with it as well. If people want to cling onto an OS that is nearly 10 years old, that is their decision, however they should not expect the latest and greatest to work flawlessly with it. It's great that paragon have a partially working solution, however this is just another example of just how dated XP is