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How do I create the largest LBA28 partition possible?


lameboyadvance

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Does anyone have a guide on creating the maximum possible 28-bit LBA (~137GB) partition for use in older Operating Systems?

I tried using FDisk but it just partitioned the entire drive.

EDIT: According to this post, the maximum available is ~127GB due to OS limitations.

So the question now is, how do I make the largest possible FAT32 partition usable under all FAT32 capable OSs?

Edited by lameboyadvance
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Have you tried to tell the Fdisk to make a partition in % of the drive.

Fdisk does not work correctly when using capacity as the input. But, when using % it works quite good. It just displays wrong data.

It is possible to use bigger partitions than 137GB. But, some OS functions will not work properly, then. I had a lot of problems with Windows 95 and a 160GB HDD. Windows 98 can work very good with the drives exceeding 137GB depending on the IDE drivers used. DOS is working fine if BIOS supports the LBA48.

Edited by Sfor
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What size is your HDD?

Let's say you have a 250GB drive. 137/250=0,548. Enter up to 54% as the size of the first partition, then.

Edited by Sfor
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Darn. Format the drive. Run chkdsk and it will tell you the amount of clusters on the drive. If below 4M everything will be fine.

The top partition size is not related to the LBA28 limitation, as far as I know.

But, first of all:

- what size HDD do you have?

- what Windows version do you want to install on it?

- what chipset does your motherboard have?

- does the BIOS detect the HDD correctly?

Edited by Sfor
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- I've just bought a 320GB Samsung IDE drive.

- I've got Windows 98SE installed.

- VIA chipset, according to Device Manager.

- The BIOS, FDISK and Windows seem to detect correctly.

I may have already installed the LBA48 patch, but I still want it to work on any (FAT32) OS I throw at it.

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Windows 98 should work fine with the VIA chipset IDE drivers installed. The VIA drivers do have the LBA48 support, as far as I know.

Microsoft limits the amount of clusters to 4M in their products (4M is not the exact number). This is the maximum partition size limitation cause.

Windows 95 does not have LBA48 support built in, just like the Windows 98. But there are no drivers with LBA48 support for VIA or Intel chipsets available for Windows 95. I saw some unofficial attempts to add the LBA48 support to Windows 95, however.

DOS with FAT32 support works fine with LBA48, as long as BIOS does support LBA48 correctly.

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137/320=0,4281

The first partition should be up to 42% of the free disk space.

The second.

137/(320-137)=137/183=0,7486

The second partition 74% of the free space available.

The third one 100%

The Fdisk from windows 9x will not accept the parttion sizes greater than ~64M. But when entering partition sizes in the % of the free disk space available, it should work correctly.

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When you really want to have the max, you can't use FDISK. With Ranish you have more control.

According to MS the maximal cluster count for Scandisk and Defrag is 4177920. Clusters are 32 KiB, so the maximal sector count is 267386880. In Ranish you can create a partition which comes as close to this value as possible.

You can theoretically create a partition of exact this size, but since all partitions have to start at head 1 sector 1 of a cylinder, this can be impractical. Make sure that the ending sector of the partition is 268435456 or lower (the LBA28 limit). In Ranish you can use F4 to toggle between CHS and lineair addressing.

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It is true the Fdisk does not let to create partitions in just the right size. But, if one does not have what one likes? One has to like what one has.

I do not like Fdisk, anyway.

The partition size limitation has nothing to do with the LBA28 limitation except for the size. Looks like Microsoft decided there is no sense creating larger partitions than 128GB. Anyways, there are two separate problems with separate solutions. Yet, the partition size limit is not important if there is no LBA48 support.

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It is true the Fdisk does not let to create partitions in just the right size. But, if one does not have what one likes? One has to like what one has.

Anyone who wants to like Ranish can download it for free :)

The partition size limitation has nothing to do with the LBA28 limitation except for the size. Looks like Microsoft decided there is no sense creating larger partitions than 128GB. Anyways, there are two separate problems with separate solutions. Yet, the partition size limit is not important if there is no LBA48 support.

The Scandisk/Defrag limit is smaller than the LBA28 limit. Not much, only half a GiB, but enough to damage your partition using Scandisk when you only faced the LBA28 limit. On the other hand, it's easy to create a partition small enough to be safe for scandisk problems, but which crosses the LBA28 border. (You will only have to put another partition before it). So the OP will have to face both limits.

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