Ext HDD's greater than 137GB under Win ME

[Mhilo1]

Thanks Loew. I modified the file all went well.

My thanks to all who have contributed to this thread, as I found the details helpful.

I have successfully used Norton Ghost 2003 to image a number of older computers all running Win XP, Win 2000 or Win 2003 Server.

However, it has never worked where I have had more than 1 USB external driver (hard or floppy) connected to a computer. Hence I could not have an external floppy drive to boot with and then have a USB connected drive for the computer image to be copied to)

So how did I get around this?

I used either the specially made Ghost Boot Disk (floppy disk) per instructions from this thread in an internal computer floppy drive OR used the Norton Interactive DOS program initiaited from within Windows itself (computer restarts using a virtual drive on the computer).

My only regret is that for a hard drive, I was not able to use my new Western Digital 750 Gb USB external drive, as I could not get it recognised by the Norton Boot Disk or the Interactive program. I was wondering if this is because of a computer processor limitation, that it cannot recognise such large drives??

I would welcome anyone's comments on any of the above.

The config.sys file I used was:

[COMMON]

DOS=high,umb

DEVICE=himem.sys

Device=Usbaspi.sys /norst /v /w

Device=di1000dd.sys

...and the di1000dd.sys was modified to allow larger USB drives (but didnt work on my 750Gb).

Regards

Mhilo

Edited February 22, 2011 by Mhilo1

[dencorso]

Did you try ASPIEHCI.SYS, patched as indicated by RLoew, and GUEST.EXE?

Use:

Device=Aspiehci.sys /int /all

Install=guest.exe

instead of:

Device=Usbaspi.sys /norst /v /w

Device=di1000dd.sys

BTW, you can use RAMFD.SYS to boot from a USB diskette, then disconnect the diskette and connect a USB HDD or pendrive, in plain true DOS.

You just need to add a Device=Ramfd.sys, immediately before the line that loads either aspiehci.sys or usbaspi.sys. HTH.

[piikea]

I've used the Panasonic drivers floppy's w/ NG 2003 many times in the past & they "work" or enable my ext 80GB HD to be seen (& imaged to / from). However as you said it won't recognize larger drives (a 1TB ext HD in my case). They have at times been awfully finicky. Just the other day I had to use them & for some unknown reason it would only recognize the ext HD once out of about 10-15 tries. I was able to image a partition to the ext HD but then was never able to get it recognized subsequently to restore said image to the computer. I finally had to copy the image to my 2nd int HD which is of course recognized in NG & restore from there.

Unfortunately I can't provide answers or solutions others probably will though!

[dencorso]

Related to the initial issue of this thread -- (& this may be a crazy / stupid question) but it is it possible to convert 1 partition of this 1TB ext HDD from FAT32 to NTFS? (Not necessarily as a permanent "configuration" but for data transfer to an NTFS HDD).

Yes, it is possible to do it. Win XP offers an app to do just that without loosing any data (which name is convert.exe) and Partition Magic can do it, too. Or you can simply reformat it (losing all data inside the partition). You can reformat each partition independently, as many times as you wish, without affecting the other partitions. However there is no need to do it for the reason you stated, unless you're dealing with files > 4GiB (-1byte, to be exact)... Else you can move data freely between NTFS and FAT-32, in either direction, without problems.

[piikea]

Related to the initial issue of this thread -- (& this may be a crazy / stupid question) but it is it possible to convert 1 partition of this 1TB ext HDD from FAT32 to NTFS? (Not necessarily as a permanent "configuration" but for data transfer to an NTFS HDD).

Yes, it is possible to do it. Win XP offers an app to do just that without loosing any data (which name is convert.exe) and Partition Magic can do it, too. Or you can simply reformat it (losing all data inside the partition). You can reformat each partition independently, as many times as you wish, without affecting the other partitions. However there is no need to do it for the reason you stated, unless you're dealing with files > 4GiB (-1byte, to be exact)... Else you can move data freely between NTFS and FAT-32, in either direction, without problems.

Well great. In was under the impression you couldn't just add data (mp3's, etc.) from FAT-32 system onto an NTFS system. If I get a new system I'd probably want to use NTFS but still be able to play my current mp3's on my old computer as well as put them on to the new one as well. I was envisioning having to convert the drive and it's data to NTFS from FAT-32. I'm glad I won't have to do those step!!

Thanks

[Prozactive]

Some long-delayed feedback on the modified DI1000DD.SYS and ASPIEHCI.SYS drivers per rloew...

The modified DI1000DD.SYS does seem to allow progress past the former crash point where the divide overflow error occurred but eventually still results in the following error message:

Your program caused a divide overflow error.

If the problem persists, contact your program vendor.

Note that this error message now occurs after Ghost 2003 is loaded, and has a blank gray Ghost 2003 opening splash screen window with the Symantec logo on the bottom as the background. That was not the case with the former divide overflow error.

The modified ASPIEHCI.SYS does not seem to have any effect, however. The same divide overflow error continues to occur as before.

@jds: I was able to finally get a USB 2.0 hub working with the PCI card and did some testing with it. The MDGx-modified Panasonic USB driver v.2.28 does not detect any devices attached to the hub, but the original v.2.27 version of the driver does, for whatever reason.

Also, I was mistaken. That 1.0 GB external USB HDD was not NTFS-formatted as I thought, but FAT32 instead.

Edited March 5, 2011 by Prozactive

[M()zart]

I started copying a file to it and switched to a game. While playing a game I have received several blue screen messages that data was written incorrectly and some files may be lost or something like that. Then I checked this disk with scandisk. It found that copies of FAT are different and three lost fragments - most likely the copied file. Scandisk fixed errors, however it stopped responding when completed. I have pressed Reset, and when I booted up, any

application that tried to view the disk structure hanged up, and shortly after this the whole Windows 98 hanged up. However when I run CrystalPlayer which had media files from this disk in playlist, it played the playlist files successfully.

Now if I boot with the HDD plugged in, every windows app hangs immediately after trying access the HDD. However I managed to copy a 40 Mb file from it successfully with good old Norton Commander (under windows). It seems that Norton Commander accesses disk OK. If I boot with the HDD not plugged in, when I plug it in, an Explorer window with its contents appears and I can browse HDD for several seconds may be a half of a minute, then everything hangs up as usually. If I pull the HDD out, system may start responding again after hangin up. Everything looks like the situation when I plugged only one end of my Y-cable. This time I always plugged in both ends. I tried different ports (and my flash memory stick works in any port, I've tested it). And when I insert either of the Y cable ends HDD LED lights which meens that both ends seem to be working. Before this my HDD worked OK with Windows 98 (though there were errors when accessing it from several apps simultaneously and when writing from USB memory stick to USB HDD and vice versa).

On my Windows 7 PC everything works correctly. I have checked HDD with scandisk (without surface scan), and everything is OK.

My configuration:

Motherboard: Intel D815EPE2U with USB 1.1 ports

256 Mb RAM.

Celeron S 1 GHz

320 Gb Team USB drive with single FAT32 partition.

Windows 98 SE with almost latest Revolutions Pack and KernelEx 4.5 release

(tried to uninstall KernelEx - nothing changed)

NUSB 3.3 (tried to install 2.4 - nothing changed)

MDCU (does not remember exact version)

My plan of actions is the following:

Test it with the Windows XP live CD on the same PC to determine whether the problem is hardware or OS-specific.

Try it with USB hub just in case

Try to restore my OS from backup.

If it is hardware, may be I should buy a PCI USB 2.0 card.

I'll do first three steps this weekend.

Any advice?

[M()zart]

The problem is solved. Well, actually there were no problems. In case of USB 1.1 and big HDD - just be patient. When I access the HDD for the first time, an accessing application hangs up for approximately 2,5 minutes, and then everything works perfectly until reboot. May be the whole FAT needs to be cached into memory, or it needs some other thing. If I do nothing for 2,5 minutes, the HDD is read correctly after it.

Unfortunately, sometimes I cannot write files to it on this PC. And it does not seem to be OS-specific, when I boot with WinXP live-CD, I cannot write the same files. It seems that it cannot write certain byte sequences. The same files can be successfully written to the USB memory stick, so it may be the HDD behaviour with USB 1.1 ports. And this Windows XP even cannot check this disk with Scandisk. On my Windows 7 PC with USB 2 ports I don't experience such problems with this HDD.

Well, no advice in more than a week. Glad I was able to solve it myself. Hope, this will be useful for somebody.

[piikea]

Well, no advice in more than a week. Glad I was able to solve it myself. Hope, this will be useful for somebody.

I was getting similar BSOD's w/ my ext 1TB HDD with WMe OS too but was never able to resolve the issue. I've since added XP onto the same PC & using same ext HDD has no issues. Unfortunately I had/have no solutions I can provide.....sorry!

[jds]

Unfortunately, sometimes I cannot write files to it on this PC. And it does not seem to be OS-specific, when I boot with WinXP live-CD, I cannot write the same files. It seems that it cannot write certain byte sequences. The same files can be successfully written to the USB memory stick, so it may be the HDD behaviour with USB 1.1 ports. And this Windows XP even cannot check this disk with Scandisk. On my Windows 7 PC with USB 2 ports I don't experience such problems with this HDD.

It might be the same problem I encountered a few months back :

http://forums.seagate.com/t5/Barracuda-XT-Barracuda-and/Silent-write-failures-with-500G-SATA-in-JM20337-USB-enclosure/m-p/72767

Joe.