Question:Closed 8 years ago. ?
Why is it so that 32 bit is limited to 4 GB RAM but it can easily support 1 TB HDDs?
How does the binary math work?
Answer: The problem is with addressing: the RAM addressing is done on per-byte basis, so 2^32 allows to make 4G bytes addressable.
The hard-drive addressing is done on per-sector basis. Each sector is 512 bytes long. Thus a single 32 bit value allows to address a sector in 2 TB disk.
To allow access for disks greater than 2TB the Operating System uses 64 bit sector addresses.