ExFAT, FAT 64, other filesystems

[Offler]

I was trying to turn my win98 based system to video recorder but i reached 2gb barrier and after some patching 4gb barrier, this time caused by FAT32 filesystem.

At this point i tried to find so much information as possible to break this limit with ability to run Dos based OS and Win98 at all - ant it means completely change filesystem at least on one disk.

Some inspiration:

http://www.ebsembeddedsoftware.com/product...fs_overview.htm

The question is which filesystem can be used with win98/dos, fully compatible with FAT32 and its limits are similar to NTFS or Linux based filesystem. I have possibility to buy the ERTFS product but first i want to know what possibilities are there, and what limitations are here.

[dbrunton]

Interesting. I'd check with the company to see how Windows 98 runs with that FAT64.

But look at these two links out from Paragon

http://www.ext2fs-anywhere.com/index.htm

http://www.mount-everything.com/home/ntfsw/features.htm

The other point is, how well does your video software support extra large files? Can it safely go over the 2 Gb and 4 Gb limits?

[Mijzelf]

You've got a problem. W9x internally uses a 32 bit filepointer, so it cannot use files bigger than 4 GiB, no matter which filesystem you use. That is easy to prove, just try to create a >4GiB file on a networkdrive, W9x will fail, while an XP system will succeed. (Assuming the network drive has a proper OS/filesystem).

/Edit: The trick FAT64 uses to create a bigger file, is to create a subdirectory with several <4GiB files in it. Your video software could do the same.

A video DVD is always devided in <=1GiB files. I suppose this is done for the same reason.

Edited September 14, 2007 by Mijzelf

[Offler]

well this system has been patched to break throught 2gb barrier. I really dont know if the 4gb barrier is caused only by the filesystem or by the other things and i dont have acess to network disk with NTFS.

all i can do is to format one disk to ntfs and then use winternals ntfs98 driver but its performance was not usable for video capturing.

Did someone of you use other filesystem than FAT32 (or older) with win98 or Dos?

[Mijzelf]

On a dual boot system I've used ext2 for W95 (on W98SE). Worked. But unfortunately it's readonly. (Well, maybe fortunately, since sometimes it lost its perception of the ext2 partition, showing garbage in Explorer.) AFAIK there are no freeware r/w for W9x.

[Offler]

those installations which makes windows able to read (and something write) from other filesystems are mostly working as a driver comparable to compression software - in this case they are not usable. They can consume some part of cpu and they negatively affect entire harddisk behaviour. Best should be compatible file system, without need of any additional software, and also filesystem which is freeware.

Now i am really interested in FAT64 based filesystems and in their free (or partially free) versions, but if there is possibility to patch windows 98 to break throught 4gb barrier. For now i was able to store 4,200 mb of data in one file.

[888]

Probably its not what OP want to hear, but IMHO best option is to go with any NT-based windows and NTFS.

There are hardly any good and irreplaceable Win9x-only software out there, so for a 'video recording' machine get over 9x and find that old Win2000 CD and make use of it

[Offler]

I dont like easy ways

I did some comparisons of win98 and win2000. Yes it was usable for video recording much more as win98 was and the support for win2k is also much better and throught winXp there is enough drivers for everything, but even when few system bugs were gone, new system bugs appeared.

If i should build up new system it should be 32 bit system based on Core (32bit) platform with windows 2000, but until then i shall still use windows 98. For 64bit cpus there is just no suitable OS which i want to use.

and as long i know there is a lot of hi-quality capturing programs which work good here in win98. Just the FAt...

Edited September 18, 2007 by Offler

[erpdude8]

Probably its not what OP want to hear, but IMHO best option is to go with any NT-based windows and NTFS.

There are hardly any good and irreplaceable Win9x-only software out there, so for a 'video recording' machine get over 9x and find that old Win2000 CD and make use of it

any NT-based version of Windows EXCEPT WinNT4 and earlier. NT4 is too weak for video recording software and most of them won't work under NT4. Use Win2k (NT5) or better.

I dont like easy ways

well good luck, Offler.

Edited March 15, 2008 by erpdude8

[alexanrs]

Can't the video recording software just split the file? I know some video editing tools like VirtualDub are, and I think VirtualDub is also capable of capturing video.

[Offler]

yes they can, but small amount of video and audio is lost - few miliseconds - when the video is being captured from tv tuner. as i know there are possibilities how to fix it in video muxer but nobody tried it because NTFS was available.

right now i have installed Paragon EXT2FSAnywhere shareware. i have some disks here to i try to format them and later mount. then i shall see if i will be able to capture files larger than 4gb, and the question is how large they can be

[Marius '95]

Just a question...

How many files need patching to increase that 32bit file pointer? Can it be done?

To Offler:

I tried Paragon. You can't create files >4GB.

Edited March 15, 2008 by Marius '95

[Offler]

to marius:

i have tested it too now.

with FAT32 and with patch from LLX i was able to create 4,294,918,144 mb, with NTFS and with patch from LLX i was able to create 4,294,918,144 bytes long file. so if we are thinking about additional filesystems kernel has to be upgraded...

while i have here the demos i try other FS.

definitely no change at all... i try again the disk internals driver. but i fear that it shall not help.

Edited March 15, 2008 by Offler

[Fredledingue]

yes they can, but small amount of video and audio is lost - few miliseconds - when the video is being captured from tv tuner. as i know there are possibilities how to fix it in video muxer but nobody tried it because NTFS was available.

right now i have installed Paragon EXT2FSAnywhere shareware. i have some disks here to i try to format them and later mount. then i shall see if i will be able to capture files larger than 4gb, and the question is how large they can be

I'm capturing video at a resolution of 640x480 since 2002 on my w98se computer with excellent results. But I don't use a tv-tuner, I use a Video-in on a tvI/O videocard. Tv-tuner usualy suck.

I don't understand why a few milliseconds bothers you. If you capture in high bitrate mpeg-2 codecs, your movie will be split in 4 or 5 parts only. Losing, even one second every 25 minutes will go unoticed.

It's also easier to recompress/reedit the video by shorter clips than the whole movie at once, from my experience.

But breaking the 4Gb barrier would be awsome anyway.