File size limit

[JWink]

I found a reference in the forum archives to GIG file sizes greater than 2GB which implied that it was possible, but I can\'t seem to make this happen on my system (I am using NTFS with WinXP Pro). When I try to save in the Giga Editor, it tells me that there is an error writing the chunk (or something like that). Has anyone been able to create GIG files greater than 2 GB?

[Haydn]

2 GB is the limit in WinXP. There is a switch that can stretch it to 3 GB but it is not recommended except for maybe SQL databases.

[Scott Cairns]

2 GB is the limit in WinXP. There is a switch that can stretch it to 3 GB but it is not recommended except for maybe SQL databases. <font size=\"2\" face=\"Verdana, Arial\">- Actually I thought that limitation was in earlier Windows versions. I could be wrong. I think a file size is only limited to 2gb when you have a FAT16 file format on your hard drive.
Given that most motherboards take upwards of 3gb just in ram these days I would be surprised if a file was limited to 2gb.

Scott.

[christian marin]

haydn, this cannot be dependent on the OS, as i have a series of files (although not .gig-files) stored here with W2K on an NTFS-partition much greater than 2GB - some database-files are almost over 16GB (and the limit is said to be 1,048,516 TB)
somewhere on the nemesysmusic-site there is a statement mentioning a single gig-file can be up to 4.3 GB (and they count it decimal obviously)
christian

[csduke]

From Microsoft Knowledgebase pertaining to FAT32 and XP:
\"You cannot create a file larger than (2^32)-1 bytes (this is one byte less than 4 GB) on a FAT32 partition.\" This would lead me to believe NTSF files can be at least 4 GB and probably larger.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314463 (\"http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314463\")

The 2GB number may have been transposed from the maximum addressable RAM limit.


http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314463 (\"http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314463\")

[Haydn]

The 2 GB limitation is a program limitation, not a file size limitation as mentioned. Which can be pushed to 3 GB. This would limit things like Giga Editor to 2 GB when it loads the whole file into memory. This only affects what is in memory and not streaming off the hard drive. Databases can be terabytes in size as the whole database is not loaded into memory at one time.

Programs such as Kontakt can get past the 2 GB limit by loading multiple instances.

[christian marin]

csduke, you\'re absolutely right - my comment has not been very precisely, i refered to the mentioned 2GB-filesize-limit with XP and did not think, that someone might use FAT32 running XP ...
the limit of adressable RAM is 4GB (2GB with W95), although the advanced server is capable adressing 8GB using the same 32-bit-computer
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;268363 (\"http://http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;268363\")

haydn, the 2GB-limit applies to a thread of a process (program) and can be overcome, as the above mentioned article also says

but generally i feel we\'re acting here the same way as some might remember from Win3.1-time - a workaround for the workaround - so we can not expect to get a pleasant solution without migrating to 64-bit-systems ...

christian