GUID Partition Tables and Networking

[hoverbike]

I am contemplating making a 4 TB RAID5 with five 1TB Hitachi drives. As I understand I have to use GUID Partition Table (GPT) instead of MBR for windows to recognize a partition larger than 2.2TB (which means I have to use an x64 version of windows).

My question is, if I use GPT and share the entire volume to all my other computers on the local network which are running win xp pro sp2, will they all be able to see this shared drive? I have never used GPT or had a partition larger than 2.2TB so if anyone have any ideas, please let me know. Thanks!

[primesuspect]

That's a good question, and I'm interested to see the answer.

Welcome to Icrontic! :)

[kryyst]

My understanding is that they should be able to see the full drive without any problems. The limits are strictly placed on the machine that is actually running the drives.

[Thrax]

That is my understanding as well. It's a limitation of available addressing space on the host machine.

[hoverbike]

Thanks to you two for the information (or your understandings ;P). Well, that is good news!

[mtrox]

If you think about it, once your Op Sys sends data to an Ethernet card, it is cut up into packets and the original file system is meaningless. You connect every day across the Internet without ever needing to know anything about the file system and/or patitioning at the other end. Your computer just sees packets of data.

At the Ethernet level all devices talk in terms of packets. What those devices do with those packets at their end is up to them.