Max. partition size for 2K's CHKDSK and defrag?

[joanne342]

Hello

I have a dual boot system with Win98SE and Win2K (SP3). My main hard drive is 60GB, in two partitions, with 40GB for 98, and 20GB for 2K.

I also added a 500GB data drive which I got to work by flashing my BIOS (it's a Jetway 830CH motherboard from 2001), enabling LBA, then formatting the data drive within Windows 98 by right clicking on it in the "My Computer" folder.

I got Win2K to see the data drive using the EnableBigLba tool from http://www.48bitlba.com/tools.htm.

It's connected to the motherboard via IDE.

I have been unable to partition it because FDISK wouldn't recognise the drive's capacity correctly and Partition Magic 8 simply refused to work (I forget the exact error message).

So it's in one big 500GB partition right now which I'm concerned about because I've heard of data corruption when drives gets fuller than 137GB.

Having been through the steps I've been through is that a valid concern? Is there anything else I need to do? Is it vital I make smaller partitions? Maybe with Gdisk? Would it be wiser to connect it via an ATA PCI card rather than the IDE connector on the motherboard?

Also I know 98's scandisk and defrag won't work on partitions bigger than 137GB. Do 2K's CHKDSK and defrag have the same limitation? It's a data drive so it doesn't really get fragmented a lot, but it would be nice to have the option to defrag it. And if 2K's defrag is a no, what third party one would you recommend?

Many thanks for any advice,

Joanne

[jaclaz]

As a rule of the thumb, something that came out in late 1999 (Win2K) should be more "evoluted" than something that came out in mid 1998 (Windows 98).

Actually, 2k was NOT 48 bit LBA compatible until SP3, but it is officially supported since.

Compare:

http://www.48bitlba.com/win2k.htm

with:

http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm

There are tricks, hacked files, unofficial patches and the like for Win98, but, notwithstanding the very good work done by many people (lots of them right here on the MSFN board ), I would not recommend using anything beyond 137 Gb on a Win98 production system. (I will be flamed for this, I know ).

On the other hand, Win2k post SP3 and with the Enabled registry entry on a compatible motherboard/BIOS is FULLY lba48 compatible.

If I were you I would boot in Win2k and re-partition the drive using it's Disk Management, making a first, active FAT32 partition below the 137 Gb and formatting the rest in two or three NTFS ones (just not to be tempted to do something you may later regret on the latter partitions from Win98)

If for any reason you cannot re-partition/re-format the disk from Win2K, you can use a (FREEWARE) Linux based live CD, like the excellent Parted Magic:

http://partedmagic.com/

that includes gparted, a tool that allows or resizing partitions:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

In other words, a FREE program that does what Partition Magic used to do from DOS.

Connecting to the IDE motherboard port or to a PCI ATA card will NOT make any difference in regards of lba48 problems, though, depending on the motherboard, it may speed data transfer.

jaclaz

[joanne342]

Thanks for your help

[dencorso]

There are tricks, hacked files, unofficial patches and the like for Win98, but, notwithstanding the very good work done by many people (lots of them right here on the MSFN board ), I would not recommend using anything beyond 137 Gb on a Win98 production system. (I will be flamed for this, I know ).

I'm quite happy to oblige! If working flawlessly and being freeware is not enough for you, what more do you want from LLXX's patched files to consider them worthy of using? M$ blessings perhaps? Let's point people to the info, not perpetrate unwarranted misinformation, please! Big HDD & 48-bit LBA Thread Index, On using HDDs larger than 137 GB (128 GiB) with Win 9x/ME

[jaclaz]

I'm quite happy to oblige! If working flawlessly and being freeware is not enough for you, what more do you want from LLXX's patched files to consider them worthy of using?

Maybe a single, clear thread summing up the contents (not an index of the threads)?

Currently:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=129027

a. 173 posts/9pages

b. 437 posts/22 pages

c. 65 posts/4 pages

d. 8 posts/1 page

e. 3 posts/1 page

f. 32 posts/2 pages

g. 40 posts/3 pages

h. 12 posts/1 page

i. 21 posts/2 pages

+ more links within.

I find not realistic that a newbie will read 791 posts/45 pages, understand everything in them without having to study and understand more concepts (that are often referenced to as "assumed" by the experts ), and succeeds at first try on a production system.

jaclaz

Edited January 25, 2009 by jaclaz

[dencorso]

I'm quite happy to oblige! If working flawlessly and being freeware is not enough for you, what more do you want from LLXX's patched files to consider them worthy of using?

Maybe a single, clear thread summing up the contents (not an index of the threads)?

[snip]

I find not realistic that a newbie will read 791 posts/45 pages, understand everything in them without having to study and understand more concepts (that are often referenced to as "assumed" by the experts ), and succeeds at first try on a production system.

[somewhat_offtopic] Sure. I'm facing the selfsame problem, perhaps a little bigger, trying to make sense of posts galore (I just cannot force myself to count 'em up, sorry), scattered over many threads and over at least three forums, in the hopes I eventually will be able to make the "XP Kansas City Shuffle" work for my board and USB drives... I've already learned a lot, but there still is much more to go... There is nothing as sobering as a face-first tumble down into ice-cold reality: Welcome to the desert of the real! [/somewhat_offtopic]

I've reserved the second post because I intend to do just that. Sort of. ASAP. [Later Edit:] Here is the link to the Mini How-To, now located on the post #2 of my Index thread.

Edited January 31, 2009 by dencorso

[jaclaz]

[somewhat_offtopic] Sure. I'm facing the selfsame problem, perhaps a little bigger, trying to make sense of posts galore (I just cannot force myself to count 'em up, sorry), scattered over many threads and over at least three forums, in the hopes I eventually will be able to make the "XP Kansas City Shuffle" work for my board and USB drives... I've already learned a lot, but there still is much more to go... There is nothing as sobering as a face-first tumble down into ice-cold reality: Welcome to the desert of the real! [/somewhat_offtopic]

[still_somewhat_offtopic]

FYI, just came out:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?...ic=6672&hl=

[/still_somewhat_offtopic]

jaclaz

[joanne342]

Thanks dencorso. That's the clearest thing i've read about it.

And thanks for pointing me to those links. I've saved all those threads off and i'm in the process of reading them although, as jaclaz predicted, a lot of the details are flying over my head right now.

[dencorso]

Thanks dencorso. That's the clearest thing i've read about it.

And thanks for pointing me to those links. I've saved all those threads off and i'm in the process of reading them although, as jaclaz predicted, a lot of the details are flying over my head right now.

You're welcome!

Now, don't delay before installing BHDD31. It'll keep your 500GB partition safe. Your case falls under my "Case One", so it's quite simple to get on the safe side. And from BHDD31 you'll get a DOS SCANDISK.EXE (from Win ME) which is able to work correctly with your big partition as well.

And in what regards all the info in my Index thread, I guess the most relevant to you right now is my post #5 in thead j. But just to sum it up here for your specific case: (i) The DOS programs NDD.EXE and SCANDISK.EXE work OK up to about a 1 TB partition, at least (yet, SCANDISK.EXE is much faster). (ii) The DOS programs FORMAT.COM and FDISK.EXE work OK up to a 500 GB partition. (iii) The windows programs DEFRAG.EXE and SCANDSKW.EXE (both depend on DISKMAINT.DLL) work OK with partitions of slightly above 850 GB. And NDD32.EXE is limited to slightly above 250 GB (and I split my own 500GB disk in two 250GB partitions because of this). Yet, I strongly recommend you the Ranish Partition Manager (part244.exe) for partitioning and formatting big partitions in IDE HDDs. And I do recommend also that you do your defragging with JKDefrag, under Win 2k, unless you decide to use partitions of 400GB or less. Observe that this size limitation of SCANDSKW and DEFRAG has nothing to do with 48-bit LBA support. After installing BHDD31 you'll have full 48-bit LBA support from ESDI_506.PDR.

[JoeMSFN]

Yet, I strongly recommend you the Ranish Partition Manager (part244.exe) for partitioning and formatting big partitions in IDE HDDs.

I've heard that Ranish Partition manager (a very excellent utility) version 244 was kinda iffy and 240 should be the one to use. Although I've used 244 myself without any data loss, I've seen posts (sorry don't have the links) that referenced 244 as having the possibility of data loss or some other such dire problem.

[dencorso]

I have used part240 and part243, besides part244. Neither one has given me any problems when working with IDE HDDs (under DOS alone) or with USB pen drives and HDDs (either under DOS alone or under Win 98SE DOS Box). But I've experienced corruption of SATA drives more than once, either with 240 or with 244 (never used 243 for it).

Nowadays, I remain using part244 for IDE HDDs, but use Symantec's GDISK (great, but not free) for all other cases. I never repartition a disk that has valuable data inside without previously backing-up all relevant partitions, so in the case anything goes wrong during partitioning and formating I can always do it again, with or without zeroing out the disk in between, depending on what went wrong. But it's now a long way since I've partitioned my first (20MB, MFM) HDD, way before the Ranish Partition Manager was created, and I've had very few partitioning accidents since then, certainly less than five different occurences, and all of them with pendrives or SATA HDDs, never with IDEs (nor with the now obsolete MFMs or RLLs).

[joanne342]

Thanks again.

I've downloaded BHDD31, Ranish Partition Manager and JKDefrag and I'm about to do a backup and install BHDD31.

[pointertovoid]

Hi there, a few hints more:

On an old mobo, adding a Pata adapter card on the Pci can also improve speed. It generally exceeds 137GB - independently of the Bios, avoid a risky flashing - and may add Raid functions. The best chip is by far Silicon Image's Sil-0680, any cheap eBay Chinese card using it is good.

Win98 accesses as much as the Bios does (the adapter's Bios if any). No 137GB limit if the Bios has Lba48. But W98 doesn't access Ntfs normally. And a huge Fat32 gets inefficient, that's why W2k won't format a volume over 32GB in Fat32 (but uses it).

W2k defrags volumes of any size but the cluster size of Ntfs must be 4kB. W2k's Defrag is way better (not as fast but better result) than its competitors. It runs slowly on Fat32.

FDisk displays false information but works properly even over 137GB, provided you take the one from Win Me which is given officially by Microsoft as a patch to W98.

Fat32 is limited to about 8TB per volume and Ntfs goes beyond BUT W98 and W2k are limited to 2TB disks. The solution is Gpt, available in W2k3-Vista-2k8 (and some Linux).

GParted is definitely excellent but prefer older versions (v0.2.2) to the newer v0.3.7.7 which has only a qwerty keyboard, is badly translated, asks more questions during its slower boot. v0.2.2 already offers Gpt!

[mikesw]

Fat32 is limited to about 8TB per volume and Ntfs goes beyond BUT W98 and W2k are limited to 2TB disks. The solution is Gpt, available in W2k3-Vista-2k8 (and some Linux).

GParted is definitely excellent but prefer older versions (v0.2.2) to the newer v0.3.7.7 which has only a qwerty keyboard, is badly translated, asks more questions during its slower boot. v0.2.2 already offers Gpt!

WIN 2k and XP support a maximum partition size of 2TB due to limitations of MBR. If you go to GPT, then VISTA and the newer W2k3 server

lines will allow you to read/write the GPT partitions; however, windows 2K thru XP can only read GPT partitions, they can't boot from them

and the OS must be 64 bit and not 32 bit.

Why aren't you using win 2k SP4 instead of SP3 ????????

I can see 750 gig drives and format them without problem using Win 2K install disks. Of course I had to modify the w2k install disk

registry with the LBA patch to be able to do this. It looks like you are trying to add the patch after it is already installed.

Edited February 3, 2009 by mikesw

[joanne342]

Hiya

Thanks for those last two replies. That's useful information.

The reason I'm using SP3 is that it's on the version of the install disk i have. I only use win2k for the internet and I only got it because my mobile broadband said the oldest OS it would work with is 2k so I made a dual boot system. I was very happy using 98 before that.

I don't use automatic updates because 3 Mobile Broadband can be flaky at times so if I try to top up the couple of days before my data allowance is due to run out and it doesn't let me do it, then I do the top up after the data allowance has run out and it's charging me £1 a MB (either that or walk to the library and do it) I just don't want automatic updates doing a great big download at the time =)

I reformatted and reinstalled windows quite recently so I don't have all the updates on 2k at the moment, but I spend most of my time using 98 anyway.