I have scoured the FAQs, manual and forum however havent seent his question raised yet (apologies if it already has).

 

Do you need a 64bit OS to address shares/unRAID implementatios > 2TB?

 

I know this limitation/requirement existed for Raid 5 implementations, however unRAID is very different given each HDD is both standalone, and as part of a Share (aggregation of underlying files across various HDDs).

 

Therefore, just curious if i create a share say with 3 x 2TB drives, filled completely under one share, would i need a 64bit OS to address all that space, or does unRAID handle that itself when files are copied to/from?

 

Thanks

Don't worry about that.  The 32bit OS limitation of 2 Terabytes is for local volumes only. 

 

Which actually raises a question in my mind about how unraid will respond with hard drive (not share) sizes larger than 2TB.  Since after all unraid is 32bit, is it not?  Will the current production versions handle drives larger than 2TB?

Don't worry about that.  The 32bit OS limitation of 2 Terabytes is for local volumes only. 

 

Which actually raises a question in my mind about how unraid will respond with hard drive (not share) sizes larger than 2TB.  Since after all unraid is 32bit, is it not?  Will the current production versions handle drives larger than 2TB?

2TB might be a windows NTFS limit... but according to this reference, it is 8TB on a 32 bit OS for ReiserFS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

Don't worry about that.  The 32bit OS limitation of 2 Terabytes is for local volumes only. 

 

Which actually raises a question in my mind about how unraid will respond with hard drive (not share) sizes larger than 2TB.  Since after all unraid is 32bit, is it not?  Will the current production versions handle drives larger than 2TB?

 

This is why we need 20 or more drives. 

 

Therefore, just curious if i create a share say with 3 x 2TB drives, filled completely under one share, would i need a 64bit OS to address all that space, or does unRAID handle that itself when files are copied to/from?

 

If you enable user shares, each drive will be limited to the OS and filesystem maximum, but the virtual view of the user share makes the individual filesystems appear as one large volume. 

 

Limetech will have to answer if there are any restrictions on side.

My guess is it will be quite a while before we see that threshold hit. (anyone have 16 2TB drives yet?).

 

 

According to that wikipedia article ntfs will handle 16 Exbibytes. 

 

Sorry, did a little more reading and it's a windows limitation, and not a file system one.  My bad.  And there are even nifty ways around it.