DOS ain't dead

New Idea how to beak 2TB on WinXP-32 (Users)

posted by RayeR , CZ, 23.05.2026, 13:51

I had an idea how to break that 2TB barrier in WinXP. I wrote a small program that use Dokan library+kernel driver to create a virtual drive. Dokan provide several callbacks that I have to fill with data. My program use true LBA48 IOCTL_ATA_PASS_THROUGH_DIRECT to read physical sectors beyond 2TB and serves it to Dokan. Unfortunatelly Dokan cannot create a simple block device. It works on file level. So I expose one big file DISK.RAW on virtual drive that expose data from NTFS partition beyond 2TB. Then I tried to use ImDisk to mount this file as another virtual disk to expose the content of NTFS FS for Windows. There's some bug that Windows didn't recognize NTFS on this virtual disk but with WDE disk editor I can read sectors from it and the 1st sector readed is the correct NTFS bootsector. So there's a chance it may work...
Of course this complicated spaghetti chain could be simplified by derect patching of ImDisk kernel driver to properly use LBA48 calls but I'm not so guru in programming Windows KMD, maybe someone else...
https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=242639&mode=view

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Complete thread:

• Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - RayeR, 27.04.2026, 22:45 (Users)
  • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - mceric, 28.04.2026, 01:35
    • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - bretjohn, 28.04.2026, 03:04
      • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - Laaca, 28.04.2026, 05:08
        • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - RayeR, 28.04.2026, 17:28
          • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - Rugxulo, 29.04.2026, 05:23
            • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - RayeR, 29.04.2026, 20:09
        • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - bretjohn, 28.04.2026, 17:30
          • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - Laaca, 28.04.2026, 18:31
            • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - RayeR, 28.04.2026, 20:31
    • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - RayeR, 28.04.2026, 17:21
  • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - Zyzzle, 29.04.2026, 01:39
    • Partitioning of 4TB HDD for legacy OSes - bretjohn, 29.04.2026, 03:39
    • some TSR/patch to modify BIOS/EDD? - RayeR, 29.04.2026, 20:20
      • some TSR/patch to modify BIOS/EDD? - ecm, 29.04.2026, 20:56
        • some TSR/patch to modify BIOS/EDD? - RayeR, 30.04.2026, 17:31
          • some TSR/patch to modify BIOS/EDD? - ecm, 30.04.2026, 20:06
          • some TSR/patch to modify BIOS/EDD? - Laaca, 01.05.2026, 12:24
          • some TSR/patch to modify BIOS/EDD? - RayeR, 04.05.2026, 17:48
            • failed with hybrid MBR under Windows - RayeR, 07.05.2026, 15:40
              • failed with hybrid MBR under Windows - bretjohn, 07.05.2026, 22:36
                • failed with hybrid MBR under Windows - RayeR, 09.05.2026, 18:16
                  • failed with hybrid MBR under Windows - RayeR, 11.05.2026, 07:47
                    • New Idea how to beak 2TB on WinXP-32 - RayeR, 23.05.2026, 13:51