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Category: Computer hardware and software
Windows Drive Limit?

I recently worked my way to drive Z: in my windows OS and I was wondering...

Is there anyway to keep going because i need to install 4 more drives.

Don't even say get linux. I already have it too.

I don't think so. You can disable and re-enable drives in the device manager as you need to, I guess.

That's illegal in some states:

DUW

'Driving Under Windoze'

im practicly constantly using all the drives now i guess they will be just linux drives then

I'm a little curious as to what you are doing that requires so many drive letters. Do you actually have that many physical drives? Or, are you using virtual drives and/or partitions? If the latter, there may be another way to organize your data.

yes 2 500 gig harddrives partitioned out to quite a few drives (mostly fat and ext partions) and now i got this 160gig

Also, you can mount drives:


This article describes how to create a mounted drive by using Disk Management in Microsoft Windows XP and in Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

A mounted drive is a drive that is mapped to an empty folder on a volume that uses the NTFS file system. Mounted drives function as any other drives, but they are assigned drive paths instead of drive letters. When you view a mounted drive in Windows Explorer, it appears as a drive icon in the path in which it is mounted. Because mounted drives are not subject to the 26-drive-letter limit for local drives and mapped network connections, use mounted drives when you want to gain access to more than 26 drives on your computer. For example, if you have a CD-ROM drive with the drive letter E, and an NTFS volume with the drive letter F, mount the CD-ROM drive as F:\CD-ROM. You can then free the drive letter E, and gain access to your CD-ROM drive directly by using F:\CD-ROM.

from:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889

He may have the same issue as me... My Dual Tuner DVR's hard drive crapped out twice, so I finally had to get one of the new Dual tuner's with the dvi out instead of the HDMI. My TV is HDMI only, so I had to get a cord to convert it. I just happened to be at BigLots and found the cord I needed. It wasn't the nice 12 foot HDMI cable I had previously, it was 6 foot :(. I should have known better than to buy it.

Anyways, to the point... I had to place the cable box lower on the rack, the rack is behind the TV. I had to use about 20 Xbox game boxes to elevate the cable box from the lower rack to try and make the cable box visible. He could have experienced this same problem, and if he didn't have all the old games, maybe he chose to use hard drives to elevate his cable box? Granted, getting to Z is a lot of hard drives. In addition I don't believe it's safe to have so many internal hard drives hooked up below your cable box. There could be some overheating issues.

If this is why you need so many drives, I would recommend doing what I'm doing. Just buy a HDMI to DVI cap and use your old cord.

Also, you can mount drives:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889

problem i got 1 ntfs partition

Never mind i figured it out.
This helps alot.

I don't know the specifics of the situation, but it seems that having that many drives is just insane, especially when they are only partitions. What possible reason do you have for needing so many partitions? (Perhaps it is valid; I'm not saying it isn't, but I just can't think of one myself.)

I don't know the specifics of the situation, but it seems that having that many drives is just insane, especially when they are only partitions. What possible reason do you have for needing so many partitions? (Perhaps it is valid; I'm not saying it isn't, but I just can't think of one myself.)

since after you get sooooooo many files and folders on a single partition (i think around 50,000) windows runs checkdisk every boot on that partition it was doing it with my E: drive untill i moved some of the wallpapers on it to another drive

That still doesn't answer the question. Then have one junk drive, and turn off checkdisk for that drive.
Or keep these on an external drive, again solving your issue.

That still doesn't answer the question. Then have one junk drive, and turn off checkdisk for that drive.
Or keep these on an external drive, again solving your issue.

i put things on different partitions for easy sorting and when i install windows i ALWAYS format my drive im putting it on

c: nothing really but its only 3 gigs has boot files
D: contains the os and 4 gigs of virtual memory 7 gigs
E: my 20 gigs+ of wallpapers/screensavers
F: program files
G: mymusic
H: Emulators+rom/iso backups of my games
I: Dvdrw drive
J: incoming/unsorted/downloads
k: cdrom drive Yuri's revenge never leaves this drive
L: my dvd isos (i accually need this i have broken many dvd's)
M: unsorted
N: an xbox360 dvd drive (360 died)
O: unsorted
P: more game backups
Q: empty as of now
R: more music
S: this drive WAS P: but i made more partitions its used for os backup and my other windows os
T: and on is blank as of now

Partitioning is a good idea. It protects data against dangerous crashes, at least somewhat -- although I've had Windows take a neighbouring partition down with it as well.

Partitioning is a good idea. It protects data against dangerous crashes, at least somewhat -- although I've had Windows take a neighbouring partition down with it as well.

i know thats why i do this stuff but i had so much space i wanted to make more partitions and went a little crazy

I don't know the specifics of the situation, but it seems that having that many drives is just insane, especially when they are only partitions. What possible reason do you have for needing so many partitions? (Perhaps it is valid; I'm not saying it isn't, but I just can't think of one myself.)
So when you're restoring the system (from a crash, virus etc.) you don't lose all your data.

So when you're restoring the system (from a crash, virus etc.) you don't lose all your data.


yes and i do this almost on a weekly basis BUT I CANT GO WITHOUT MY CNC FIX

I think that is absolutely insane. You don't need a separate partition for games, for pictures, for downloads and for ISOs, etc etc etc.
Partitions are not just folders to play with.
If you want to protect your data from windows corrupting its partition, find. Then you have C:/ and D:/. Even if you do find it necessary to have several partitions so that different types of data are separate in case one partition dies, you could have... what? 5 partitions?
Certainly not 26.

There are very valid reasons for several, as stated above, not to mention having several operating systems. But... way too much as is.

If you are this concerned with protecting your data (and that isn't a bad thing), then just make backups.

If you want to protect your data from windows corrupting its partition, find. Then you have C:/ and D:/. Even if you do find it necessary to have several partitions so that different types of data are separate in case one partition dies, you could have... what? 5 partitions?
Certainly not 26.Why not 26? There's nothing wrong with having 26 or more partitions.

I think that is absolutely insane. You don't need a separate partition for games, for pictures, for downloads and for ISOs, etc etc etc.
Partitions are not just folders to play with.
If you want to protect your data from windows corrupting its partition, find. Then you have C:/ and D:/. Even if you do find it necessary to have several partitions so that different types of data are separate in case one partition dies, you could have... what? 5 partitions?
Certainly not 26.

There are very valid reasons for several, as stated above, not to mention having several operating systems. But... way too much as is.

If you are this concerned with protecting your data (and that isn't a bad thing), then just make backups.
Well... some people think that several partitions means they are organised, and it also improves system performance.
I have 2 hard disks, with 4 parititions. One has Windows Server 2003, one has my XP, one has my data and the other one is for my backups. If I move my page/swap file to the Recovery partition, my Windows is a tad bit more responsive.

... you could have... what? 5 partitions?
Certainly not 26.


Ok i have 2X 500GB harddrives. With large partitions i easily get to windows maximum amount of files and folders before stuff starts to get corrupt. I think its a limitation of fat. And NTFS has a max table of contents size of 1GB for every 10GB in the partion and I deal with just as many small files as I do large ones.

tech_support I agree entirely. But that is 4 partitions, under 1/6th of having 26 of them.

lain, I hope you're using FAT32, not FAT. Anyway, it sounds like it's time to invest in an external harddrive to back up some of your older files.

...FAT32, not FAT...

i am using fat32. its still essentailly fat tho.

FAT is a 32GB max per partition, and a lower limit on filesize, I believe.
Anyway, unrelated.

fat32 has a limit of 2gb per file but somehow i get no problem with these 10gb+ files

4gb per file, and there is no limit for multiple files, just individual files. 8GB of images is fine; 4.5gb of a single file is not. Etc.

it allows me to write these dual layer disc's to the drive just fine. :P

Storing the disc images from them? Then you're not using FAT32. It's NTFS...

try hooking up the drives. I think it letters:
A:, B:, C:, D:... X:, Y:, Z:, AA:, AB:... AY:, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD...
I think.

no. only single letters are allowed for some dumb reason

but i did find out if you type "\" windows goes to the system drive (specified in registry) so i got \mnt\hda0 and so on, its mildly cool

Heres any wasy way to fix your problem. Wait for one of your hard drives to fail. That will clear up quite a few of the letters being used for your partitions. But there is the question, why not just keep it all in one spot without that many partitions? It will probably be faster, take less time, and you won't have to worry about needing more letters for drives. JF

all but 6 partitions are on 1 drive

i like organization

Write back when the drive fails that has the other 20. Organization is good, they made these cool things called folders for that.

I think that is absolutely insane. You don't need a separate partition for games, for pictures, for downloads and for ISOs, etc etc etc.
Partitions are not just folders to play with.
If you want to protect your data from windows corrupting its partition, find. Then you have C:/ and D:/. Even if you do find it necessary to have several partitions so that different types of data are separate in case one partition dies, you could have... what? 5 partitions?
Certainly not 26.

There are very valid reasons for several, as stated above, not to mention having several operating systems. But... way too much as is.

If you are this concerned with protecting your data (and that isn't a bad thing), then just make backups.


Write back when the drive fails that has the other 20. Organization is good, they made these cool things called folders for that.

Shows what you guys know. Folders are NOT the same as partitions. Here’s just a small sample of some of the advantages that partitions have over folders:


Wth separate partitions, you can waste less space (it does add up), by using different cluster sizes. For example, use large clusters on a partition with large video files, and small clusters on a partition with small pictures.

If you had ~10GB of photos and wanted to back them up, would you rather back up a 10GB partition of just photos or a 300GB drive of photos, videos, MP3s, games, OS, and so on? Block-level drive imaging is often preferable to file- or folder-level backups for numerous reasons.

Partitions also drastically reduce fragmentation. If you organize things in the same folder, you have all of the files, big and small, sharing the same drive, and leaving gaps and such, thus requiring constant de-fragmentation of the entire drive. With partitions, you can de-fragment smaller amounts of data (eg a 5GB temp drive where the files change frequently) and avoid defragmenting data that changes infrequently (eg videos) at all.



try hooking up the drives. I think it letters:
A:, B:, C:, D:... X:, Y:, Z:, AA:, AB:... AY:, AZ, BA, BB, BC, BD...
I think.

If only; or named drives: OS:\, Games:\, Photos:\…; or at least numeric drives: 1:\, 2:\, 3:\…

--
Bob Bobson

That sounds reasonable. But how many partitions would you actually suggest? Having more than the letters of the alphabet (26) seems excessive even if you are being extra-organized. For one thing, they don't mind hard drives big enough for that to really matter, at least in my opinion.










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