So, this is two related questions in one- (kind of hard to google for)

In general is there a limit to the size that a 32 bit pc can have a hard drive? I mean the hardware itself... like, can I buy a 4tb drive?

And then, within that question, I'm guessing ext4 can do way upwards of that, right? So the filesystem isn't going to be the limitation.

When I google around, I see that NTFS has a ceiling at 2tb, but surely I wouldn't have that problem with ext4 (or, hell, ext3 for that matter, right)

Figure I'd make sure before ordering a 4tb drive, and that the hardware itself 32bit can do it thanks guys,

rw

This post from the Ubuntu forums should help: https://askubuntu.com/questions/5760...-14-04-1-32bit

1 members found this post helpful.

Have a look at Comparison_of_file_systems - short answer, not a concern.
The 2T issue is usually partition limit imposed by MBR disk - easiest fix is to use gpt.

Awesome, thanks frankbell.

Having a 32-bit processor does not limit the size of the hard disk it can use, only of the amount of RAM it can (easily) address.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...-32-bit-system

If using an older kernel the limit is 16TB.
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1151746

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Thanks to you too.

Yes, it depends on the age of the PC and its BIOS. In general if your PC is newer then ~2012 then I would guess it is capable of booting >2TB drive using GPT running linux.

It's from 2007.

(btw great irony here- michaelk I think you've helped me out before with this same type of rig- SD11G5. Haha! It's me again.)

But at least it's got sata 2...

I would expect the BIOS is capable of 48 bit lba so it should work.

1 members found this post helpful.

thanks.

You're Welcome-