Asus Disk Unlocker Utility Breaks Down 2.2TB HDD Barrier (Sort Of)
Asus Disk Unlocker Utility Breaks Down 2.2TB HDD Barrier (Sort Of)
Posted 11/18/2010 at 11:36am
| by Paul Lilly
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Asus a couple of weeks ago Asus slipped its Disk Unlocker utility under our radar, a piece of software designed to overcome the so-called 2.2TB barrier that, in a nutshell, prevents legacy operating systems from accessing the full storage capacity of hard drives larger than 2048GB.
The way Asus explains it, Disk Unlocker "taps into hidden storage space beyond the nominal 2048GB range, helping you use large hard drives to their maximum potential." The way things currently stand, in order to fully use a storage drive larger than 2.2TB, you need an OS that supports the GUID Partition Table (GPT), which is only supported in 64-bit versions of Windows. To boot from that same drive, things get an order of magnitude more complicated, requiring an UEFI BIOS; 64-bit version of Windows 7, Vista, or Server 2008; non-scented candles; and finely ground albino bat lips.
So where does Disk Unlocker fit into all this? Provided you're rocking an Asus motherboard, the Disk Unlocker utility essentially converts a physical HDD larger than 2048GB into a virtual drive, which can then be recognized in its entirety no matter which version of Windows you're running. And while Asus is a bit vague on this point, the manual appears to state that you can F6 the appropriate drivers during Windows XP installation so that you can boot from the drive as well.
We haven't had a chance to play with it yet, but when we do, you can be sure we'll report back the results.
Image Credit: Asus
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Techrocket9
November 18, 2010 at 6:33pm
Odd that this article fails to mention that Linux supports HDs greater than 2.2TB even with a regular bios...
Neufeldt2002
November 18, 2010 at 7:42pm
All the info I can find says that Linux needs a UEFI bios to boot from a 3TB drive, but they do support 3TB that is non bootable, just like Windows and OS X.
jhains
November 18, 2010 at 4:11pm
I can't find an online vendor for any kind of bat lips, albino or otherwise.
Eddd
November 18, 2010 at 3:13pm
"Finely ground albino bat lips". I laugh. I'm worried about you, but I laugh.
ocnier
November 18, 2010 at 11:41am
It's a bandaid on a sucking chest wound. The hardware vendors have known about this for years and have done nothing to fix the matter until the last minute. We are all semi screwed for the next 3 years. The good news is that with advent of SSDs for boot drives that we get a modified pass. Oh well just gotta suck it up till UEFI becomes standard on all boards.
praetor_alpha
November 18, 2010 at 5:35pm
Same thing is happening with IPv4 and IPv6. Let me post this while I still have an IPv4 address.
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