Raid5-Controller - PCI - Arrays larger than 2 TB - possible?

The OS is not the problem. Dynamic drives can handle more than 2 TB.

what kind of HD is it..   IDE, SATA, SCSI

Sorry, I forgot. SATA.

hey..  just go to  newegg.com and search for   raid-5   pci (32bit)   sata drive  ,  you will see lots of them..

Are you sure that there are any that will allow arrays larger than 2 TB? Only the modern ones (PCIe/PCI &$ Bit) do support that, I did not find a single model so far.

if sata yes.. 3ware is a good hardware

There is no 3ware controller for the pci32 interface that supports arrays larger than 2 TB.

That's incorrect.  3Ware 9000S series controllers are all 64 bit and support greater than 2TB arrays. All three PCI controllers I linked to earlier will.

Don't confuse 32 bit PCI with 64 bit controllers. 64 bit controllers can run on a 32 bit interface.

To emphasize the point:
http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata9000.asp

Yes, I was confused. The controllers of the 9000series will fit. And you are sure that if they fit, that implies that they are always backward compatible with the 32-bit-pci-bus, Will?

There's no backward compatible involved. They are PCI bus cards and PCI bus is 32 bit.

Another important thing: In your article http://www.carltonbale.com/2007/05/how-to-break-the-2tb-2-terabyte-file-system-limit/ they say nothing about dynamic disks as being a possibility to break the 2-TB-Limit. However, in wikipedia's NTFS article, it says
---
Maximum Volume Size
    In theory, the maximum NTFS volume size is 264-1 clusters. However, the maximum NTFS volume size as implemented in Windows XP Professional is 232-1 clusters. For example, using 64 KiB clusters, the maximum NTFS volume size is 256 TiB minus 64 KiB. Using the default cluster size of 4 KiB, the maximum NTFS volume size is 16 TiB minus 4 KiB. Because partition tables on master boot record (MBR) disks only support partition sizes up to 2 TiB, ->dynamic<- or GPT volumes must be used to create bootable NTFS volumes over 2 TiB.
---
So can you for example use a dynamic volume in windows 2000 without using additional software raid to address a volume on your 3ware 4-TB-raidarray?

"no backward compatible involved" - now it's getting over my head :) For example this locost card here http://www.dawicontrol.com/german/flyer/DC-4300R%20Flyer-DE.pdf has the same interface as the 3ware 9000 series and dawicontrol emphasizes that it is backward compatible to the 32-bit-pci-bus ("Abwärtskompatibel zum 32 Bit PCI-Bus"). So that does not deserve emphasizing, every card with that interface would be compatible?

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/b51311b3-ec61-402e-96cd-986c89ef40eb1033.mspx?mfr=true
Clears up the thing with dynamic disks: Maximum is 2 TB for a simple volume and 64 TB (Raid 0/1) respectively 62 TB (Raid5) if you use software raid to put together several dynamic disk to a volume.
So in my case, if I used a controller that could go over 2 TB per array, I would have to use linux to take advantage of it.

I correct myself: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/LUN_SP1.mspx - xp64, 2003 server sp1 and above can do better: GPT. Another error in my previous posting: of course mirrored dets can only go up to 2 TB (in OS' prior to xp64/2003 SP1).
I will close this question. Thanks

You're welcome. Finally convinced yourself did you? :)

FYI - the PCI bus is and always has been 32 bit -- no exceptions.

PCI-X is 64 bit and was used on server/workstation motherboards. 32 bit PCI cards can be used in a PCI-X slot. PCI-X has been replaced by PCI-E.