HD size limitation in win98?

[wbth]

Hi, I want to help a friend's family out whose 4gig HD is full by installing a second HD for him on a win98 P3. They don't have any money to do anything so I thought ' Hey, I can handle that'.

He told me that a guy at a computer shop told him that either win98 OR his MB won't handle anything bigger than 40Gb. He can't remember exactly which.

So before I rush out and buy anything, I thought I'd check.

Personally, I'm aware of RAM size issues but not hardware. Anybody know anything about this??

Thanks in advance - Dave.

[Dread]

i have 2 60gb drives running under 98se... no problems
i'm not sure at what point sizewise one might encounter problems
i think it may be more an issue with fat32 ... i think theres a 4gb file size limit or so i've heard
good luck!

[wbth]

Hi Dread, thanks for quick reply!

2 x 60, that's good news. He may have to stick with this old machine for quite some time before his situation improves and with 3 kids, well the computer is a bit like his flat if you see what I mean.

Thanks again - Dave.

[blt_abx]

Your bios and OS must support 48-bit LBA for a drive greater than 137GB.

Win9x/ME does not support 48-bit LBA.

You can get around the limitation by using third party drive overlay software or by the use of a PCI IDE controller card.

[Dread]

thanks, blt
good information to know

[Gorganzola]

There is also a partition size limitation of 32GB if I recall correctly.

Without know which motherboard your friend has we can't say if the board will support anything larger then 137GB.

There may be a patch to fix this. Installing the Intel Application Accelerator drivers may allow for drives larger for 137GB. At least that is what I understand from information at http://www.48bitlba.com

This will test if the chipset supports LBA. A BIOS update may be required to enable the ability of 48bit LBA.

http://support.intel.com/support/chi.../CS-009302.htm

[ThugsRook]

partition size limitation in Win9x is 128gb

it is suggested that you dont make a partition larger then 32gb due to cluster size. but for a storage drive its not really a big deal since "slack" space will be at a minimum anyways.
for the OS drive id suggest 16gb or smalller.


cluster sizes in Win9x FAT32:

upto 8gb = 4kb clusters
upto 16gb = 8kb clusters
upto 32gb = 16kb clusters
33-128gb = 32kb clusters

if you dont know how to interprate that chart, lets just say that 32kb clusters have 8X more slack space then 4kb clusters

HTH


BTW: you will need the FDISK file from WinME for drives larger then 64gb ~ FDISK.EXE (zip)

[Dread]

Thugs-

Thanks for the info and the file!
This place has a lot of good folks with TONS of information

[wbth]

TO ALL:

I'd have to reitterate Dreads last comment, nothing short of fantastic from the folks on this forum!!

From the replies, without which, I would have come to a sticky end if I'd simply gone ahead with what I had in mind.

The old saying "a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing" I'm sure was coined with computing in mind.

Many Thanks - Dave.