During the installation of the hard disk drive and the subsequently the partitioning of the hard disk drive it is required for the user to enable the large disk support. The large disk support enabling is actually prompted during the installation of the hard disk drive.

It is done to select the file system during the installation process. The file system that is usually required to be selected is FAT16 or FAT 32. One of the important features of the operating system is that a specific file format system or generally the file system is needed.

This file system has the feature to enlarge the size of the hard disk drive by actually compressing the files or the data that is stored on the hard disk drive. The size of the hard disk drive is a constant that cannot be changed. The hard disk drive’s memory capacity is dependent on the file system.

What the file system usually does to increase the memory of the drive is to compress the files or the data that is stored over it. The data is stored in such a way that the hard disk seems to have a large memory. This is the option that is provided during the selection of the file system. The feature of the Large Disk Support should be enabled where in the user can avail the features of the file system.

As an example consider the partitioning of the hard disk drive under the Disk Operating System. Primarily in MS-DOS the FDISK command is used for the partitioning of the hard disk drive. The procedure of which is described as below. The first step is to insert a bootable diskette and run the fdisk command from the command prompt.

If the hard disk drive that is being used is large enough to warrant the use of FAT32 file system then, you will be asked whether you want to enable the Large Disk Support. If you press ‘yes’ then the FAT32 will be enabled or you can even deny it by pressing the ‘no’. If the FAT32 is enabled if there are the partitions over 500 MB. In case if the user denies the enabling of the FAT32 then it is not possible for you to put your entire hard disk drive into one partition; if it is greater than the size of 2 giga bytes.

There will be only one partition over the hard disk drive and it is not possible to make other partitions. The Simple BIOS translation works by doubling repeatedly the number of heads and halving the number of cylinders that are shown to Disk Operating System – DOS. The large mode is also called as the Extended CHS or the ECHS. It is used to get the BIOS translations. Basically this has some fixed standard size that should be followed.

There is a size barrier that is dependent upon the maximum number of the cylinders a hard disk drive may have. It is also dependent upon the maximum heads in the hard disk drives, maximum sectors and the maximum capacity of the hard disk drive. The architectural structure of the hard disk drive is mapped and the distribution and the allocation of the memory are done by enabling the Large Disk Support.

The hard disk drive basically contains the cylinders, heads and the sectors and the capacity of any hard disk drive is dependent upon them. It is also possible to calculate the capacity of the hard disk drive if the number of the cylinders, heads and the sectors are known priory.

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