NTFS support in Win 98/SE/ME?

[Dave-H]

I also think the bursty writing is due to caching. When writing to USB keys, the Key's activity light is continuously on even during the pauses at the use end. If you are planning to do a lot of transfers to an USB Device, you may want to lower the MaxFileCache setting and reboot before you start.

Hi Rudolph!

Sorry, I only just saw your post, I didn't get an e-mail notification about it for some reason.

Actually the writing in bursts, with the computer unresponsive in between the bursts, happened when I was writing to the fixed IDE drive, not when using the SATA-USB interface.

I didn't try writing any really large files using the interface, because the other problem, with the files apparently not "sticking" on the drive, was more of a concern at the time.

Now I know that the Paragon driver does actually work to read and write, I intend over the weekend to do some tests to see if the intermittent writing of very large files happens with the interface as well, and also whether I can fix the other problem, whatever it is, by tweaking caching settings.

[rloew]

A possible problem with the Paragon Driver is that it's cache is not getting flushed before the USB Drive is removed.

This can happen if:

1. The Drive was not removed safely.

2. The Paragon Driver does not work with the Safe Removal feature.

3. The Paragon Driver does not support Removable Devices.

@Dave-H You may want to try writing to the USB Key then shutting down Windows without removing the USB Key. Then remove the Key and restart Windows.

[Dave-H]

Still not getting any e-mail notification of replies!

Checked all the settings and logged out and in again, I hope that may fix it.

Thanks again Rudolph.

I did some more tests today with the 1TB SATA drive with the USB interface before I saw your last message, with more encouraging results this time.

It took me a while to get the drive recognised in Windows 98, as it was appearing in Device Manager but had no drive letter assigned, so it didn't appear in "My Computer" of course.

I tried setting it as a removable drive, which allowed me to assign a drive letter.

This was not too happy at all, causing system freezes, but when I removed the removable drive check mark in Device Manager it reverted to being a fixed drive and the letter I had assigned seemed to have "stuck".

I could read the drive fine except for one of the test files I had left on it from last time.

This would read fine in XP, but in Windows 98 any attempt to access it resulted in a "File System Error (1026)" message.

I could read and write OK to it with other files though, including one over 1 GB, and now they did seem to "stick" and were still there after the drive was unmounted and remounted in 98, and in XP, which is an improvement on last time!

I then rebooted the machine into XP with the drive unintentionally still powered and set to use the eSATA interface.

Chkdsk ran automatically on it, and found quite a few errors -

Checking file system on I:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is NTFS 1TB.

One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.
Unable to locate the file name attribute of index entry test1.txt
of index $I30 with parent 0x5 in file 0x5f.
Deleting index entry test1.txt in index $I30 of file 5.
Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.
CHKDSK is recovering lost files.
Recovering orphaned file test2.txt (95) into directory file 5.
Cleaning up 16 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 16 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 16 unused security descriptors.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.

976760536 KB total disk space.
159867948 KB in 51 files.
52 KB in 33 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
96024 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
816796512 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
244190134 total allocation units on disk.
204199128 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 01 00 00 5e 00 00 00 7b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ....^...{.......
07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 2b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........+.......
40 4b 4c 00 00 00 00 00 46 c3 23 00 00 00 00 00 @KL.....F.#.....
ae 4c 2d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 .L-.............
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 a3 de 07 00 00 00 00 ................
d0 75 af be 00 00 00 00 68 46 07 00 33 00 00 00 .u......hF..3...
00 00 00 00 00 b0 90 1d 26 00 00 00 21 00 00 00 ........&...!...

Test1.txt was the file I couldn't read under Windows 98, so it obviously had file system errors.

I'll go back into 98 again later and see if I can now access it OK.

[Drugwash]

There used to be a utility called Nopey that could flush the HDD cache using the command nopey sync X: (where X is the drive letter).

[dencorso]

There used to be a utility called Nopey that could flush the HDD cache using the command nopey sync X: (where X is the drive letter).

Yes! sync does work on 9x/ME!

In fact it is one among the last 4 SysInternals Utilities that do so, according to CharlotteTheHarlot.

And yes, again, sort of... MS crappy info? Sure. But unusually extra-crappy.

So, now, we've got two different flushers suggested... Please, Dave, tell us whether they do make any difference or not. They ought to, but, then again, the difference between theory and practice is that there's no such difference in theory, whereas in practice...

[Dave-H]

Thanks again guys, and sorry for the delay in replying.

As I said in my last post, my most recent tests were much more encouraging, and the drive seems to be working OK now with the USB interface under 98 without files suddenly vanishing after they've supposedly been written to the drive!

I have downloaded and installed the SysInternals "sync" utility, and it seems to work fine.

Whether it makes any difference I can't really determine until I next have a problem with the drive, but I mainly use it on XP anyway as it can then use the much faster eSATA interface.

Edited February 3, 2014 by Dave-H

[FantasyAcquiesce]

I apparently found a download to version 1.03 of Sysinternals' NTFS Driver for Windows 98!
http://loadion.com/en/NTFS-for-Windows-98-1.03_69715.html

Found version 2.0, BUT it's in Spanish...
https://ntfs-for-windows-98.softonic.com/descargar

Random video I found claiming to have NTFS for Windows 98 (It's in Japanese and requires a niconico account to view)
http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm26911273

[pangoomis]

I think everyone needs the rloew's free PATCHPAR.EXE patch from his website to fix IO.SYS bug with partition corruption when using other partitions(NTFS/Linux) alongside FAT32 on the same drive when using 98SE.

I use Paragon's NTFS driver, and I'm happy with it.

[Dave-H]

Always worked fine for me too, I'm using version 1.7.

[jaclaz]

20 hours ago, ~♥Aiko♥Chan♥~ said:

Found version 2.0, BUT it's in Spanish...
https://ntfs-for-windows-98.softonic.com/descargar
 

More than "Spanish", it is the (free) ro (Read Only version), that you can find everywhere,

The actual Commercial version was from Winternals (the Commercial company connected with Sysinternals):

https://web.archive.org/web/20070526051602/www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/NtfsWindows98.html

jaclaz

 

[CamTron]

I've had trouble in the past when using both the Sysinternals NTFS driver and KernelEx at the same time. The system would randomly freeze or BSOD at unexpected moments, but disabling one or the other worked fine.

[FantasyAcquiesce]

My question has probably been answered before, but in theory...

Wouldn't it be possible to install Windows 95/98/ME on a Virtual PC and add the NTFS-read support, then create a Windows NT 4.0 or 2000 installation using NTFS, delete the system files of Windows NT 4.0 (bootloader included; alternatively, just create a blank NTFS partition with Linux), then simply copy the Windows 9x installation through a flash drive with copyzilla? The process sounds rather long, but in theory, maybe we could get a Windows 9x installation on NTFS.

This video shows it IS possible to have Windows 9x on an NTFS partition. But, it's unstable and cannot write.

What I am attempting:

1) On VirtualPC 2007, create a Windows 98SE installation. Install NTFS4DOS, Rloew's SATA/ACHI, RAM, and Universal File Reader. Also install all system updates.

2) With 7-Zip, rip the files of the VHD onto a flash drive.

3) On another flash drive or CD, burn clonezilla.

4) On another media, install puppy linux or anything that can format the drive as NTFS

5) Plug both the Windows 98 USB and Clonezilla USB

6) Clone Windows 98 USB contents to hard drive.

Result...BOOTMGR is missing...hmmm, probably copying with 7-Zip didn't properly copy the Windows 9x bootloader. I attempted something similar with Windows ME on a PC and it booted from the flash drive...gonna try using copyzilla on a virtual machine using VirtualBox.

Sometimes, it feels the features of ME that surpass 98SE are just overlooked too often

EDIT: VirtualBox ain't working on my Windows 7 PC; attempting to open a virtual machine gives a stupid 0x80004005 error...

Attempting this ends up in a blank black screen that never ends.

Edited April 10, 2020 by FantasyAcquiesce

[jumper]

DOS requires a FAT partition to boot. Win9x requires DOS. The VM image would have to be a booted DOS session with NTFS support already loaded.  Focus on getting this much working before adding Windows.

 

[jaclaz]

8 hours ago, jumper said:

DOS requires a FAT partition to boot. Win9x requires DOS. The VM image would have to be a booted DOS session with NTFS support already loaded.  Focus on getting this much working before adding Windows.

 

Yes and no, meaning that is possible to use grub4dos to boot from a FAT12/16/32 image (that can reside on NTFS).

Whether any of the NTFS drivers is "low-level" enough to then be able to boot 9x/Me, is another thing.

jaclaz

[Goodmaneuver]

Just a few points. NTFS cheats and is slower than FAT32. NTFS has ownership rights which are a pain and dangerous when employed to the registry. There is a post I said about Far Cry 1 working which can be still attempted which would be good and has got something to do with disc security or CryTek did not want it to work on 98/ME. (Some other games also claim to be 98/ME compatible but do not work, have I got a system disc protection check problem, I do not know). It is the modern Windows OS's loss that they check the FAT32 drives every boot. NTFS cheats in normal operation as well. I do not like every progression made in Windows for personal home use of which many of us use it for. FILE64 has my vote. FAT32 has hangovers from FAT16 and FAT12 and it would have been nice to have 30 bit file access but we have RLoew's FILE64.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Goodmaneuver