jaclaz

Not really a "floppy". Once upon a time, we are talking more than 20 years ago, the SCSI bus/protocol existed, which was at the time the fastest available (usually through an add-on card, typically Adaptec) for hard disks, and among the SCSI devices, there were SCSI ZIP drives and disks, 100 Mb in size, JFYI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/zip/zip-1.html jaclaz

As a side-side note I have run NT 4.00 for years on 2.1 Gb disks just fine (and they were the fourth upgrade, starting from 300 Mb. then 500 Mb and then 1.2 Gb). A typical NT 4.00 installation is/was around 150 or 180 Mb, HECK! with just removing the help files and a bunch of unneeded stuff I had it running off ZIP disks. Windows 2000 install grew to around 650 Mb (triple) and XP as well almost tripled that with a standard install size of around 1.5 Gb, so roughly XP is 9 (nine) times the size of NT 4.00, but a not too reduced system can fit into 500-800 Mb, maybe 1 Gb, so a 2GB SSD for just the system and a few programs (with data and possibly large programs on another mass storage device) is IMHO still adequate.

@waltah Another possibility is to attempt (since you have it working on another machine) to attempt a move: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html Still the suggestion to use Fernando's latest drivers is a good one, and - besides - if your BIOS allows "IDE Compatibility mode", installing the XP without any SATA driver and "switching" to them later is possible, not easy-peasy but possible: jaclaz

The benefit of what? The OP has a given PC and a given type/model of SSD's (of limited size). He has issues with the specific install (though he succeeded with similar hardware). You posted a oneliner suggesting him to buy another (bigger sized) SSD, something that seemingly doesn't address the base questions: 1) WHY the setup doesn't work? 2) HOW can I try to find what is the issue? (and hopefully solve it) Of course similar advice can be found all over the internet, typically, still one-liners: 1) buy something else 2) that is not possible 3) upgrade your (hardware, OS, software, whatever) to a newer version etc. And this right after the OP praised the MSFN forum for providing "more good advice" than the rest ... jaclaz

Are you trying to make an example of the kind of support/advice that can be easily found outside MSFN? @waltah From what you describe it seems like a driver issue , or maybe a timing problem. Since you are using a FAT32 volume anyway, I would try (on a 16 Gb SSD) to attempt installing the XP from DOS (actual DOS) via WINNT.EXE, so that we remove one of the variables (the CD loading), see (only seemingly unrelated): Method description (via Wayback Machine): http://web.archive.org/web/20080302101935/http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16713 Also are you sure that the (I believe needed) SATA drivers are integrated into the source? (or are you installing in IDE compatibility mode? For the sake of testing I would try a surely UNtouched source, even if it doesn't actually install it may porovide some hint on where the process has issue). jaclaz

You can find *anywhere* a full description of a MBR. Briefly: The MBR contains a partition table. The partition table contains four entries, each 16 bytes. Each entry describes a partition and contains 4 set of fields (not in this order) check any partition table description: 1) boot/no boot (i.e. hex 80 or hex 0) 1 byte 2) partition ID (1 byte) 3) CHS data, two fields, one describing the start address and one describing the end address, CHS addressing is nowadays obsolete, but it takes anyway 8 bytes. 4) LBA data, two fields, one describing the start address and one describing the number of sectors, each field is 4 byte, and as such it can at the very most represent 2^32-1=0xFFFFFFFF or 4294967295 sectors. Thus the limit is: 4294967295*512=2,199,023,255,040 bytes A good question would be what happens if one creates on a (512 bytes/sector) hard disk two partitions, one starting on LBA 2048 and extending for (say) 4294967295-2049=4294965246 sectors and a second one starting on LBA 4294967294 and extending for 4294967295 sectors? Would this move (with the limitation of the two partitions) the limit by another 2.2 Tib? jaclaz

Maybe easily, but not "common", I believe you are the only one I know that uses one of such arrays. Maybe other people have not the knowledge or cannot afford a similar setup, which even today is not exactly "cheap". jaclaz

JFYI, a reborn ZX80 (using only discrete components, unlike the ZX81): http://blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/2016/12/minstrel-zx80-clone.html jaclaz

Yep, but overall it is more than anything else some misinformation and/or outdated info due to the accumulated information on technology that changes (the hard disk hardware) under a "static" piece of software (the Operating System). At a given date the 2^32-1 sectors limit did imply that the max capacity to be around 2.2 Tb because *all* disks were 512 bytes per sector. Soon after the hard disk manufacturers found a possible way out by using bigger sector sizes, but in the meantime, due to the "transitioning" via the so-called "AF" drives (that I believe different manufacturers, besides calling them with different names also implemented slightly different) and to the remaining problem (no support for booting from larger than 512 bytes sector disks in most OS's) the piece of info remained valid. After all, imagine the fuss that would have happened if someone bought a - say - 3 Tb drive only to find out that it was either (512 bytes or AF) not fully accessible or (4Kb) not bootable, I can understand why it was simpler for the manufacturer not to make the distinction, particularly when the good MS guys were trying all they could to ditch MBR in favour of GPT (and BIOS in favour of EFI/UEFI). The ironic part (as I see it) is that in the meantime SSD's became the *standard* or *almost standard* main boot (internal) devices and they are still - after several years - nowhere nearing the 2.2 Tb size limit, and they are all (or almost all) emulating the 512 bytes sector size anyway. jaclaz

The limit is not in "cluster" size (that is a characteristic of the filesystem), it is "sector" size (that is a characteristic of the hardware). Besides that, there are issues in a number of OS in booting from a non 512 bytes sector size hard disk drive (which does not affect obviously "data only" disk drives). It is not however really a "hoax", the two things belong to different times, the number (of sectors, not clusters) limited by the 32 bit address space in the MBR partition table came out earlier, at a time when disks were still mostly or very largely 512 bytes sectored only and had not actually reached if not maybe in high end disks the 3 terabyte size, and while the disk makers started making the 4k sectored disks (that effectively "move" further the issue to around 16Tb) Microsoft decided to not update existing OS to handle the matter and jumped on the (Intel driven) UEFI/GPT bandwagon (and to mostly 64 bit). In other words, until the disks were 512 bytes sectored the limit was there and it was not solvable, and when later it became solvable it was decided by MS to not fully solve it on MBR scheme and adopt GPT (forcibly coupling it with UEFI without any real technical reason) and the disk manufacturers didn't want (or couldn't) provide support for that. And coupling disks with USB enclosures may provide "funny results", JFYI: jaclaz

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://awergh.110mb.com/* jaclaz

IMHO of particular interest is the reason why all Windows drivers are dated “June 21, 2006” : https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170208-00/?p=95395 jaclaz

And not even in your post ... ... out of curiosity, what does it do? jaclaz

This story seemingly continues here .... (just to keep things as together as possible) : jaclaz

You seem like having "ghost" devices. A USB hub (unless it is an external one) is not something that you connect and disconnect, likely that device is the result of a previous (failed) experiment, and has nothing to do with a USB HD being detected/working or not. You need to clean your Registry of the non-existing (currently) devices and make sure that you don't have anymore them. As a side note, you have a question mark device (Other Devices) which means that some device have not been recognized at all. When checking devices like that, it is always a god idea to set device manager as "by connection" so that you can understand the whole "chain" of devices (and drivers) connected with the one creating an issue, and - to exchange info on devices on the board (as opposed to screenshots) it is advisable that you use devcon (you can find a copy of the redistributable version here): Though not the most user friendly tool around, running: devcon find *USB*>foundUSB.txt and: devcon findall *USB*>ALLUSB.txt will provide a quick list of all devices connected to USB, the existing and the "ghost" ones, as well, something like devcon hwids USB\ROOT_*>USBhubs.txt will provide a list of all USB root hubs. It is easier this way to provide a "complete" overview of the machine status (and data can be copied). jaclaz P.S.: Previous thread, just in case:

Check this first thing: http://www.opalapps.com/sparse_checker/sparse_checker.html Here you can find a "collection" of more related tools: http://reboot.pro/topic/20487-any-tut-on-expanding-c-partition-on-many-ramdisk/ http://reboot.pro/topic/20487-any-tut-on-expanding-c-partition-on-many-ramdisk/?p=192898 There is also a built-in command in fsutil: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc788025(v=ws.11).aspx but it cannot - I believe - create sparse files directly. jaclaz

Oww, come on, you need only the RunasTI.exe, I am attaching it nonetheless. And - normally - you do not run .cmd's by right clicking on them, but rather you open a command prompt (as Administrator) and in it you execute the batch, this way you have more control (but yes, you can type exit, possibly more than once will be needed, when you have finished with the batch). jaclaz RunAsTI.exe

Well, JFYI, it's not at all like "news", that photo has been floating around since - at the very least - 2013, it is supposedly coming from Moscow, Russia: http://owned.com/p/welcome-to-advertising-in-moscow-er-maybe-not-9427 jaclaz

Well, the fact that Winimage hasn't been updated means nothing, the software dates back to 1993 or 1994 originally, and it's not like anything actually happened in the meantime since 2013, except - maybe - the coming of the .vhdx format. I seem to remember I had some issues in particular setups (non-standard "sectors before"), but a lot of time have passed so I am not too sure. To save space do yourself a favour and use a sparse file (on NTFS of course) instead of a dynamic .vhd. jaclaz

Well, not really-really, through IMDISK you are still mounting a volume (as opposed to the "whole disk" and possibly multiple volumes) only you are doing it at a different level of integration to the OS, if you want to actually "open" a volume (without mounting and read only), 7-zip is better suited (limited to RAW files or fixed size .vhd's) or Winimage (R/W, with some hiccups, if I remember correctly). jaclaz

That image is October 2005 , so it is "MSDN Subscriptions Library" or possibly "MSDN library subscription". If you have the actual CD can you provide an image of it and/or the "code" (like the X11-52519 and X11-29382 in the image you provided a link to)? April 2004 should be X10-38397 according to: http://www.um.es/informatica/index.php?recurso=6991 It seems like (for the October 2005 example): X11-29380 is Disc 1 X11-29381 is Disc 2 X11-29383 is Disc 3 so disc 3 April 2004 should be X10-38399 Are you sure that those KB are "only" in the April 2004 CD? Or maybe they are periodically re-inserted in other CD's? jaclaz

No, it didn't. You should take some time to learn how to critically read *any* statistical data. Variations within +/- 1% or -more likely - 2% represent only the possible error in the sampling or data collection. jaclaz

Good. jaclaz

Check also for $RecycleBin (hidden). See if these work (though they are about "removable" disk drives): http://www.thewindowsclub.com/prevent-system-volume-information-folder-usb https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/44a54eee-7e11-4fed-a043-8db90439666c/prevent-system-volume-information-from-being-written-to-an-external-drive-on-windows-10?forum=win10itprogeneral jaclaz

Check (and double check) if you are booting UEFI or BIOS (actually CSM or "legacy mode"): https://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/29504-bios-mode-see-if-windows-boot-uefi-legacy-mode.html jaclaz