Support and General Use > Hardware
Is there any possible way round the FAT32 2TB capacity limitation?
Frankenpod:
I'm getting to the point where I might upgrade a flash-modded ipod to greater than 2Tb total storage. I realise there are some big problems in doing that - am curious whether they are likely to be insurmountable.
I'm frankly confused about the whole topic. I gather FAT32 can cope with larger partitions, by using larger cluster sizes, but the problem is with the limitations of MBR? And, I gather Rockbox itself would need major work to use GPT? (and it's not likely to happen for a long time, if ever). Or would using different cluster sizes in itself create a problem?
There's also the question of whether Windows could see the disk properly in order to sync files to it.
How about using more than one partition? Would that be a possible workaround? (Is the limit on partition size or on total disk size?)
I'll most likely just carry on increasing the ipods I have towards 2TB (upgrading the smallest one, then making a new one with the cards removed, and so on...), but every time 1Tb cards come down in price I get tempted and wonder about the possibility of exceeding that limit.
amachronic:
The 2 TB limit is on total disk size and solving that would require a lot of work. Adding partitions won't help. We can only address 32 bits worth of sectors (= 2^32), and at 512 bytes per sector that's 2 TB.
That said, I think the iPod 6g has 4k physical sectors so it might be able to "cheat" and go up to 16 TB in theory. I have no idea if that would work as expected with MBR / FAT32.
Frankenpod:
Hmmm, OK. Probably will settle for 2Tb max for the foreseeable future, then. Really wasn't sure whether the limit applied to partition size or total disk size. I guess the crucial issue is the use of MBR?
With cards increasing in capacity, I presume this will eventually become an issue for other players, not just modded ipods? (Always assuming there is any future for standalone players and native-RB anyway)
Frankenpod:
I notice there's comments on IRC about some work being done on possibly supporting >2TiB.
I confess I don't know enough to understand even what that discussion is about, or what targets it applies to.
But in case it's of any use to know, just thought I'd mention that I've experimented with that limit bit with the quad iFlash and 7th gen Ipod, and the most I could ever get to work was a combo of micro SD cards - one labelled "1TB" (which seems to actually be 1000GB rather than 1024GB) + 512GB + 512GB + 128GB.
Though nominally > 2TB, that actually adds up to slightly under 2TiB, due to the (confusing) difference between GiB/TiB and GB/TB. By my workings, the 2TiB limit actually comes out as 2200GB, going by the way card-manufacturers label their cards.
A combo that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't was 1TB+400GB+400GB+400GB (which comes out as almost exactly 2TiB, and seemed to be the highest you could get to before it all went haywire, presumably because anything beyond that exceeds the 2TiB limit - even going a few GB over that would fail to restore properly and come out as being just a few GB).
If it's any help with whatever the ongoing work about sector sizes relates to, at some point I might experiment again with going beyond that 2TiB limit, but it won't be till I build another iPod.
philden:
There is a thread on head-fi.org where someone has been doing similar tests to find the maximum capacity, bearing in mind the odd use of capacity labels:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/official-ipod-video-classic-5g-5-5g-6g-6-5g-7g-ssd-mod-thread.566780/page-711
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version