By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted July 2012
Computer systems are complex combinations of hardware and software working together. To define exactly how these complex systems work, a design is put in place called the computer architecture. The Personal Computers we use today follow an exact architecture; otherwise nothing could possibly work together. Devices that don’t follow this architecture are called incompatible and won’t function on our computer systems.
To complicate matters, computer technology is constantly changing. New hardware devices are developed that must fit the existing architecture or the new device will not function correctly on current computer systems. To accommodate these new devices, the architecture must also evolve. At times, the computer architecture can easily change to handle the new hardware devices. At other times, making simple changes to the architecture can be impossible without causing problems for the millions of PC’s that use the old architecture. These roadblocks to technology advances are called architectural limits.
Perhaps a brief example of an architectural limit would help to illustrate the point. At the beginning of each hard drive commonly used is a Master Boot Record (MBR). This MBR acts as the table of contents of the entire drive. The partition table in the MBR defines exactly where hard drive partitions are located and how big they are. The architecture of the partition table sets up a 4 character field for these important numbers. As it turns out, the largest hard drive size that can be contained in 4 characters is 2TB. Hence, hard drives using the MBR are limited to hard drives no larger than 2TB. This is just one of several architectural limits on hard drives over 2TB in size.
Architectural limits will not cause problems forever. Eventually, changes to the operating system and other software will get past these architectural limits. These changes may take a few years to evolve to where the change in the limits will not cause problems for other users. So, eventually, the 2TB limit in the size of hard drives will no longer be a problem. Already ways are being developed by Microsoft and others to get past this architectural limit.
To give you an idea of what problems you may have with very large hard drives (over 2TB), let me explain how they affect the Acronis products I represent. Acronis True Image Home 2012 was released less than a year ago. It included a new feature in it that was called Large Capacity Hard Drive Support. Older versions of True Image without this new support would not work with hard drives over 2TB. My announcement paper on the new release contains the following information about this new feature –
Large capacity hard drive support - Now Acronis True Image Home 2012 supports hard drives larger than 2TB even on operating systems that originally do not support such hardware (for example, 32-bit versions of Windows XP). You can use both internal and external (USB) large hard drives.
On the other hand, Acronis Disk Director 11 Home, which was release a year earlier, does not support hard drives over 2TB in size.
Other software and operating systems may still have problems with hard drives over 2TB. You may find that hard drives of 3TB and 4TB will have problems running on your computer. For this reason, I would recommend that you avoid hard drives larger than 2TB for the next year or so till the architecture has had time to catch up with the hard drive hardware. Eventually, these very large hard drives will be available to be used on your computer system. Waiting a few months for the support needed for these very large drives would be a wise thing to do.
To order Acronis True Image Home 2012 or Acronis Disk Director 11 Home from us, go to www.ugr7.com and select the product you wish to purchase. Once you are on that product’s page, click on the appropriate Buy Now button to place your order. We charge only $25 for a single license or $60 for a three license Family Pack. You can order a download copy or we can mail you a CD with the software on it. (There is a $5 shipping fee per order if you order the CD.) When checking out of the shopping cart, enter in the special order code of UGNL0712.
If you have questions about this article or the True Image or Disk Director products, send an email to support@ugr7.com and I will try to help you with your questions.
User Group Relations
Copyrighted July 2012
Computer systems are complex combinations of hardware and software working together. To define exactly how these complex systems work, a design is put in place called the computer architecture. The Personal Computers we use today follow an exact architecture; otherwise nothing could possibly work together. Devices that don’t follow this architecture are called incompatible and won’t function on our computer systems.
To complicate matters, computer technology is constantly changing. New hardware devices are developed that must fit the existing architecture or the new device will not function correctly on current computer systems. To accommodate these new devices, the architecture must also evolve. At times, the computer architecture can easily change to handle the new hardware devices. At other times, making simple changes to the architecture can be impossible without causing problems for the millions of PC’s that use the old architecture. These roadblocks to technology advances are called architectural limits.
Perhaps a brief example of an architectural limit would help to illustrate the point. At the beginning of each hard drive commonly used is a Master Boot Record (MBR). This MBR acts as the table of contents of the entire drive. The partition table in the MBR defines exactly where hard drive partitions are located and how big they are. The architecture of the partition table sets up a 4 character field for these important numbers. As it turns out, the largest hard drive size that can be contained in 4 characters is 2TB. Hence, hard drives using the MBR are limited to hard drives no larger than 2TB. This is just one of several architectural limits on hard drives over 2TB in size.
Architectural limits will not cause problems forever. Eventually, changes to the operating system and other software will get past these architectural limits. These changes may take a few years to evolve to where the change in the limits will not cause problems for other users. So, eventually, the 2TB limit in the size of hard drives will no longer be a problem. Already ways are being developed by Microsoft and others to get past this architectural limit.
To give you an idea of what problems you may have with very large hard drives (over 2TB), let me explain how they affect the Acronis products I represent. Acronis True Image Home 2012 was released less than a year ago. It included a new feature in it that was called Large Capacity Hard Drive Support. Older versions of True Image without this new support would not work with hard drives over 2TB. My announcement paper on the new release contains the following information about this new feature –
Large capacity hard drive support - Now Acronis True Image Home 2012 supports hard drives larger than 2TB even on operating systems that originally do not support such hardware (for example, 32-bit versions of Windows XP). You can use both internal and external (USB) large hard drives.
On the other hand, Acronis Disk Director 11 Home, which was release a year earlier, does not support hard drives over 2TB in size.
Other software and operating systems may still have problems with hard drives over 2TB. You may find that hard drives of 3TB and 4TB will have problems running on your computer. For this reason, I would recommend that you avoid hard drives larger than 2TB for the next year or so till the architecture has had time to catch up with the hard drive hardware. Eventually, these very large hard drives will be available to be used on your computer system. Waiting a few months for the support needed for these very large drives would be a wise thing to do.
To order Acronis True Image Home 2012 or Acronis Disk Director 11 Home from us, go to www.ugr7.com and select the product you wish to purchase. Once you are on that product’s page, click on the appropriate Buy Now button to place your order. We charge only $25 for a single license or $60 for a three license Family Pack. You can order a download copy or we can mail you a CD with the software on it. (There is a $5 shipping fee per order if you order the CD.) When checking out of the shopping cart, enter in the special order code of UGNL0712.
If you have questions about this article or the True Image or Disk Director products, send an email to support@ugr7.com and I will try to help you with your questions.