Breaking the 2TB Limit
January 9, 2010 Featured, Technology
To Cloud, or Not to Cloud. That is the question many people are asking as people’s mobile computing needs continue to grow. That said, for people who store mammoth amounts of data at home, putting all of our data into an intangible and fuzzy concept doesn’t sound very convenient or financially feasible. Luckily, hard drives are cheap.
A few weeks ago Kenji and I were discussing the advantages and disadvantages of storing our data on the web. Kenji has about 800 Gigabytes of data in the form of backups and large media files stored on a simple D-Link 2-disk NAS device. Currently, he has both a desktop and notebook computer containing non-synchronized copies of the same files. His wife has a notebook that hasn’t been backed up in years, which also doubles as the family’s digital photo vault. In addition to this, he has two teenagers in the house, each with their own notebook, who have built up rather large volumes of music for their iPods. Again, their computers haven’t been backed up in any reasonable fashion for the better part of a year.
He knows I’m a digital pack-rat, and wants to create a similar single location for his family to put their digital photos, music, videos, backups, documents, and just about everything else that has perceived value. This way, even if a computer is lost, stolen, or broken, the data is not gone forever. But he’s run into a small problem while doing this: the 2 Terabyte Limit.
What Is the 2 Terabyte Limit?
Most 32-bit Operating Systems, including Windows XP, cannot read partitions larger than 2 Terabytes (2,147,483,648 KB) in size. This is because the computer essentially runs out of index numbers and can’t see anything beyond the last index. This is less of a problem with most current OSes, but Kenji doesn’t want to pay the exorbitant prices to upgrade 5 home computers to Windows 7, nor does he have enough storage space to backup everyone’s data before such an upgrade.
Last month, Kenji decided that his desktop computer will be converted into a make-shift network storage server. He has no room inside the desktop for hard drives, so made a trip to Sofmap to pick up a two-bay external hard drive case and two 2 TB hard drives. The problem that Kenji has, however, is that he can only get the two drives to appear as individual drives on his WindowsXP-based computer. He doesn’t want this. He wants all of his external storage to look like one great big hard drive, and he wants it to be cheap.
So What Are the Options?
I listed out four options:
- name each network share in WinXP something like “Music”, “Photos”, and “Backup”, and make sure everyone plays by the rules
- put Ubuntu Linux on the desktop and string the drives together
- get some software for WinXP that simulates a JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) setup across the network
- put Windows Home Server on the desktop and walk away
Kenji is not a computer person, though he tries his best. My mention of using Ubuntu was met with a scoff, as was the special naming of each network share. He did momentarily consider using a software tool to simulate a single network share on his computer, but the one his ears really perked up to was Windows Home Server.
With Home Server, Kenji would have the ability to add more storage in the future without needing to configure anything. We can just plug in more hard drives (up to 27 drives total) as we need them, and the system will take care of the rest. In addition to this, the network storage would look like one great big share to anyone accessing the server. Most computers can see network drives of any size, even if they’re well over 2 Terabytes in size.
On top of this, Windows Home Server would come with more of Microsoft’s too-bloated software to handle automated backups of everyone’s computer, which would put Kenji’s mind to rest whenever his kids come back from high school and complain that they forgot their netbooks somewhere.
Really? A Windows Solution?
Is this the best way to get around the 2 Terabyte barrier of a 32-bit Operating System? Who’s to say. There’s no such thing as “the best solution” for most home users, since everyone has a different set of needs and skill sets. But this was the fastest and cheapest way for Kenji to get what he wanted: a home server to act as a great big dumping place for files so he wouldn’t have to think about it anymore.
Would you have recommended something different? Is Windows Home Server something to stay away from? I’d love to hear your thoughts.