Formatting 4TB external drive for XP and Linux use

[tmathews]

I have a 4TB external drive I'd like to be able to move between XP (32-bit), Vista, and Linux. I know MBR partitioning doesn't support drives greater than 2TB, XP 32-bit doesn't support GPT, and there are problems writing ext2/3/4 from Windows.

What's a good solution to allow me to share this drive among these systems? I'm inclined towards GPT/NTFS but this seems to cause a problem for XP 32-bit. I'm planning to phase out XP before April 2014 but it would be helpful to be able to access the drive directly from XP.

Thanks!

[glc]

There is no way I can find for you to make the drive usable in both XP 32 bit and Vista, much less Linux. The only way a drive larger than 2tb can be used in any version of Windows is if it's GPT or dual MBR with a 3rd party driver. XP 32 bit can't deal with GPT and Vista/7 can't deal with dual MBR.

[tmathews]

Thanks for checking. That was the impression I got from searching around. I was hoping someone had some clever workaround I could use. It sounds like Paragon has a GPT driver for $20, but I don't want to buy something for a single use only to find out there's some catch that prevents it from doing what I want. Oh well, XP compatibility won't be an issue for me a year from now anyway...