rloew

Dear Petr, While you are trying your combinations you may want to add the following: BIOSes with and without 48-Bit LBA Support and Different brands of hard drives (Seagates are particularly interesting) Rudolph R. Loew

Dear Nitebat, I would like to see a SCANDISK and DEFRAG that can handle large partitions too. My patch allows Windows to use all of a large hard drive but it does not patch programs that choke on large partitions. Windows itself can handle at least 400GB partitions. So can DOS. You can SCANDISK large partitions in DOS, as long as you have BIOS support, but I have not seen any DEFRAG for DOS or Windows that will work. The shareware ones are just wrappers for Microsoft's DEFRAG. Commercial ones probably would not support large partitions either since large hard drives are not officially supported in Windows 9x/ME. I don't like XP or even ME so I go out of my way to support 9x and even DOS. Unfortunately, trying to fix SCANDISK has proven to be a lot more difficult than solving the 137GB limit. As for scientists and video editors, I think they may find the 4GB file limit more limiting than the 137GB partition limit. I hit that limit in a mathematical program I was working on. I think archiving would be most likely reason for large partitions. Rudolph R. Loew http://rloew1.no-ip.com P.S. I've noticed that some people on these forums say that they can use large hard drives without dealing with the 137GB limit. Windows in many cases will say everything is fine. It is only when they have loaded up their drive with a lot of data, and have the most to lose, that all of a sudden their directories turn to gibberish. I have seen a lot of postings in other forums where people have suddenly found their systems to be seriously corrupted. Using small partitions will not solve this problem. Information and other resources on 137GB issues can be found at: http://www.48bitlba.com

Dear Petr, Some of the information you posted is not public knowledge and would require substantial reverse engineering of the ESDI_506.PDR file to identify. You said you are not a serious coder, which is why I questioned your sources. Neither the major hard drive manufacturers nor the driver writers at VIA seem aware of some of your info so testing actual hard drives is unlikely to produce the results you posted. Anyone who is able to solve the 137GB limit on their own is free to do so. But as you yourself stated, they should not look at my code. This includes information posted by anyone who has. I have already found postings elsewhere by people attempting to reverse engineer my demo copy to distribute warez copies. The Phoenix BIOS, as well as my Patch, come under the interoperability exemption to the D.M.C.A. but reverse engineering my code would not since it would add no new interoperability. Rudolph R. Loew http://rloew1.no-ip.com P.S. As for the A, B and C comments by other posters. The answer is C. I know the intent of this forum, so A is not true. Otherwise I woud have done B. The other posting was in response to a list of existing approaches that only covered a limited number of chipsets. I offered the only solution that covered all of them. If anybody objects to "Commercial" code, they can write their own, independently of course. My Patch is not suited for any of the Open Source Business models.

I have written a Patch for Windows 98/98SE/ME that can be installed duirng installation of Windows, so Windows can be installed on a partition above the 137GB limit. It could be installed on a full size partition, but SCANDISK and DEFRAG will not work. The Patch works with all chipsets tested so far. Intel has not upgraded it's IAA Software to support the newer chipsets. The VIA Drives you mentioned only works on some Chipsets and has a Bug that can affect some Hard Drives. I have not seen any Drivers or Patches for other Chipsets such as the NVidia Chipsets. Rudolph R. Loew http://rloew1.no-ip.com

Dear Petr, The License agreement on all versions of my "High Capacity Disk Patch" prohibit the disassembly or reverse engineering of my software or the Patches it installs. If any of the information you posted was obtained by examining my code, or a patched ESDI_506.PDR file, it could be considered an illegal disclosure of trade secrets. In addition, anyone who uses any such trade secrets to write Software could be found to be in violation of my Copyright even if they personally have not examined my Software. Rudoph R. Loew http://rloew1.no-ip.com