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FDISK and FORMAT large HDDs


JohnHolland

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@rloew - Gotcha - check (confirmed by above, and thought so...)!

So only alternative is to use a "good" DDO to exceed 128gb on non-48-bit-BIOS which "simulates" 48-bit for want of a better term (please don't argue semantics, I know what DDO's do and how - ARGHH!).

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@rloew - Gotcha - check (confirmed by above, and thought so...)!

So only alternative is to use a "good" DDO to exceed 128gb on non-48-bit-BIOS which "simulates" 48-bit for want of a better term (please don't argue semantics, I know what DDO's do and how - ARGHH!).

I would use "provide support for" rather than "simulate".

I think DDO's got such a bad reputation because some early versions protected their own code by shifting the sectors on the entire Hard Drive. This made the Hard Drive unreadable if the DDO wasn't active, and all data was lost if the DDO was damaged.

My BOOTMAN DDO and other DDO's I have written for other purposes, do not alter the Disk Layout, so they are safe.

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Guest wsxedcrfv

Just for the record, let me post this:

I purchased a Seagate 7200.12 series 750 gb drive specifically to do a few tests. I'm not finished yet, but when it comes to Microsoft fdisk and format, here are my results.

This 750 gb SATA drive was connected to my win-98se system via a Silicon Image SIL 3512 SATARaid PCI controller card. I tested 3 versions of fdisk:

1) May 18, 2000 (this was the fdisk update for win-98 from Microsoft)

2) June 8, 2000 (this is from windows Me)

3) Oct 30, 2006 (this is from BHDD31)

To test fdisk (2), I booted from a win-ME "emergency" boot floppy disk.

All 3 versions reported that my new drive had a capacity of 5773 mb, and all 3 of them did indeed create a single-partition volume with that size. Format.com (doesn't matter which version) created a volume with a size of 5,761.55 (5,899,832 kb) after fdisk.

During boot-up, the PCI bios reports that the drive has a capacity of 698 gb. There are 1,073,741,824 bytes in a classic Gb, so the capacity of this drive must be somewhere around 749,471,793,152 bytes. I'm not exactly sure of the math that fdisk is using (or misusing) to arrive at 5.77 gb for a 698 gb drive.

I downloaded DiscWizardSetup.en.exe from Seagate's website, and it does initially run on my win-98 system, but it just hangs when I try one of the 3 install choices from the main menu (maybe a conflict with kernelex?). So at this point it looks like Microsoft's DOS tools really are limited to ~500 gb when it comes to partitioning hard drives.

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OK. Good. Now, please, if I may suggest something, do partition it to a single primary partiton with the free Ranish Partition Manager (use v. 240), and use your single > 650 GiB patition to test FORMAT.COM and SCANDISK.EXE...

from all we know they should both work OK.

BTW, a 750 GB Barracuda 7200.12, according to Seagate, has 750,156,374,016 bytes (= 698.6 GiB) , at least (from converting the published number of Guaranteed Sectors), so your BIOS is seeing the full HDD.

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This 750 gb SATA drive was connected to my win-98se system via a Silicon Image SIL 3512 SATARaid PCI controller card.

The name is not SIL. It is SiI as Silicon Image

I tested 3 versions of fdisk:

(...)

All 3 versions reported that my new drive had a capacity of 5773 mb.

(...)

I'm not exactly sure of the math that fdisk is using (or misusing) to arrive at 5.77 gb for a 698 gb drive.

The size reported by fdisk is in MiB (use UPPER case when needed) and depends on CHS/LBA settings reported by the controller BIOS. Show your numbers and we can do the math.

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Guest wsxedcrfv

OK. Good. Now, please, if I may suggest something, do partition it to a single primary partiton with the free Ranish Partition Manager (use v. 240), and use your single > 650 GiB patition to test FORMAT.COM and SCANDISK.EXE...

from all we know they should both work OK.

BTW, a 750 GB Barracuda 7200.12, according to Seagate, has 750,156,374,016 bytes (= 698.6 GiB) , at least (from converting the published number of Guaranteed Sectors), so your BIOS is seeing the full HDD.

I ran Ranish partition manager v.240 after booting the system into DOS. It reported that the drive size was 715,404 MBytes. I experienced some system instability while running Ranish (it reported several times that it couldn't write the MBR) but finally I was able to get it to create a single partition on the drive using the entire drive space. I selected it's fast-format option to format the drive. After re-booting back into DOS, DOS reported the drive to have 715,055.48 MB free. Chkdsk reported 732,216,832 kb total disk space, 16 kb cluster size (?!), and 45,763,552 total clusters. Windows ME fdisk reported that the total drive size was 5773 MB (same as before) but that the formatted partition had a size of 715,405 Mbytes with usage of 100%.

After several attempts to boot completely into Windows, I was finally able to bring the system up, and Windows reported that my D: drive has a size of 698 GB. Windows scandisk failed to run (reported insufficient memory - I have 512 mb on this system). Norton Disk Doctor failed with a blue-screen fatal exception (I have the NOLBACHECK registry entry set for Norton Utilities, but it didn't help).

I'm surprised that Ranish used a 16 kb cluster size to format the drive. If it used 32 kb then potentially Windows scandisk might run, and almost certainly NDD would also run.

I performed a simple file-copy test (I copied a directory containing 10 wav files - about 540 mb - to the new drive) and it took about 12 seconds to perform the copy. I was able to play the files from the new drive without any problems.

What I think I'll do next is see if DOS will format the drive, and I'll check to see if the drive is operating in SATA mode or legacy IDE mode (I'm not sure). Is there a way to know from within Windows if the drive is being accessed using the SATA driver, or ESDI_506.pdr? In device manager, drive properties, driver, it says "Provider: (Standard disk drives), Date: 4-23-1999. No driver files are required or have been loaded for this device."

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What I think I'll do next is see if DOS will format the drive, and I'll check to see if the drive is operating in SATA mode or legacy IDE mode (I'm not sure). Is there a way to know from within Windows if the drive is being accessed using the SATA driver, or ESDI_506.pdr? In device manager, drive properties, driver, it says "Provider: (Standard disk drives), Date: 4-23-1999. No driver files are required or have been loaded for this device."

Great! And yes, the Ranish PM has this strange behaviour of defaulting to 16 kiB clusters... But perhaps FORMAT.COM will change the cluster size, on reformatting. And if it doesn't, do give a try to the famous /Z switch.

Well, look unser SCSI, on the device manager. You probably have an entry for yor HDD there, and in its properties you'll see the SATA driver listed.

Please do run the Win ME DOS SCANDISK before and after using FORMAT.COM.

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Guest wsxedcrfv

Great! And yes, the Ranish PM has this strange behaviour of defaulting to 16 kiB clusters... But perhaps FORMAT.COM will change the cluster size, on reformatting. And if it doesn't, do give a try to the famous /Z switch.

Well, look unser SCSI, on the device manager. You probably have an entry for yor HDD there, and in its properties you'll see the SATA driver listed.

Please do run the Win ME DOS SCANDISK before and after using FORMAT.COM.

I booted into DOS and used format.com (04/23/1999) to format the 750gb drive. Format puts up a message saying "Formatting 60,04.83 MB" as it's doing the format. Not sure why or how it came up with the string "60,04.83". It takes pretty close to 1 minute per percent completion (so it takes close to 100 minutes to format this drive). When it's done, it says the drive has a capacity of 715,055.50 MB. And get this -> it used 16kb cluster size (!?).

So from this it appears that format.com (win-98 version) can format drives larger than 500 gb (in this case 750 gb) but like Ranish it uses an inappropriate cluster size (16kb in this case). Trying the format command again, this time experimenting with the /z switch, results in the same behavior: /z:64 is rejected with the message "you have specified a cluster size that's too small". /z:64 would have resulted in 32kb cluster size. However, format did accept the /z:32 parameter (16 kb cluster size). My complaint about the /z switch is that it's completely useless because it doesn't give the user any additional ability to specify a cluster size other than what format's own internal rules would have used. In this case, format thinks the appropriate cluster size is 16kb. Why it thinks that is unknown. But it's also what Ranish uses in this case too.

Trying to run Windows scandisk (using Win-ME versions of scandskw.exe and dskmaint.dll) by invoking "properties, tools, Error-Checking Check-now" still results in the "insufficient memory" error (Scandisk could not continue because your computer does not have enough available memory). So the win-ME versions of scandskw/dskmaint can't handle a volume with 45 million clusters, but (from previous experience) they can handle 31 million clusters.

Running the SATA adapter's bios setup doesn't give any hint or option at all regarding what mode the drive is being used in (SATA or legacy IDE). The bios on this card simply doesn't give me any options in that regard. The card is listed in device manager (under SCSI controllers) but the hard drive is not listed under the card (it's listed with my primary C drive under Disk Drives).

Are there any other tests worth doing at this point?

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FORMAT.COM may be relying on the existing Cluster size when it reformats. 16KiB Clusters is not the recommended Cluster size.

Another possibility is that it is using the truncated value of 60GB to decide the Cluster size.

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Yes, there are. I'd like to know how the DOS programs SCANDISK.EXE (from Win ME or from BHDD31E) and, in case you have it, NDD.EXE (from Norton 2002) behave with your 45 million cluster 750 GB partition. After testing this, you could change the cluster size manually in the BPB of the partition boot record and try FORMAT.COM again: if RLoew is right and FORMAT.COM uses the value present in the BPB, when it finds one, this should cause it to use 32 kiB sectors.

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Guest wsxedcrfv

Yes, there are. I'd like to know how the DOS programs SCANDISK.EXE (from Win ME or from BHDD31E) and, in case you have it, NDD.EXE (from Norton 2002) behave with your 45 million cluster 750 GB partition. After testing this, you could change the cluster size manually in the BPB of the partition boot record and try FORMAT.COM again: if RLoew is right and FORMAT.COM uses the value present in the BPB, when it finds one, this should cause it to use 32 kiB sectors.

When scanning the drive in question -> 750 gb, partitioned using ranish, formatted with format.com (04/23/99), with 16kb cluster size and 45.76 million clusters:

Dos scandisk from win-98 (04/23/99) ran all tests in about 2 or 3 minutes, but put up the message that it couldn't perform a surface scan because there was not enough conventional memory (this was while booted directly into DOS). Free memory was 604,xxx bytes. After modifying config.sys and autoexec.bat to get memory up to 633,xxx bytes, scandisk did not display that message. It estimated it would take 3.5 hours to perform a full surface scan. I told it to start the scan, and after about 1 minute of inactivity, it brought up the screen showing the drive map and began the scan. I stopped the scan after a few minutes.

When scanned by Norton Disk Doctor (from NSW 2002), NDD ran through the first test (partition table) and got partially into the second test (boot record) before throwing up a blue-screen error from which the computer could not recover from, requiring a cold re-start. I have the NOLBACHECK registry entry set for Norton Utilities, but it didn't help.

I was under the impression that after a drive is partitioned (using fdisk or other programs) that the cluster-size is not set during the partition process but that format.com has complete control or freedom to choose the cluster size. I will perform a re-partitioning of the drive and try to set the sectors-per-cluster (as described here: DOS Boot Sector) before attempting a re-format.

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I was under the impression that after a drive is partitioned (using fdisk or other programs) that the cluster-size is not set during the partition process but that format.com has complete control or freedom to choose the cluster size. I will perform a re-partitioning of the drive and try to set the sectors-per-cluster (as described here: DOS Boot Sector) before attempting a re-format.

Cluster size is not defined by Partitioning a Hard Drive. It is set during Formatting.

I have never used Ranish, so it may be doing both.

If possible, have Ranish blank the Partition rather than formatting it, then try FORMAT.COM.

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Guest wsxedcrfv

It seems 45 million clusters chokes NDD.EXE. Did you have HIMEM.SYS loaded when you ran it and SCANDISK.EXE?

Yes, himem.sys was in my config.sys.

Cluster size is not defined by Partitioning a Hard Drive. It is set during Formatting.

I have never used Ranish, so it may be doing both.

If possible, have Ranish blank the Partition rather than formatting it, then try FORMAT.COM.

I downloaded something called "Free Fdisk" (Author: Brian E. Reifsnyder) version 1.2.1. I could only find it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20060110183341/ffdisk.webaps.de/fdisk121.zip

It correctly identified the 750 gb drive and printed it's size correctly on the screen (no funny math or misplaced numbers). I used it to delete and then re-create a single primary FAT32 partition on the 750 gb drive using the max-drive-space option. After re-booting back into DOS, I ran format.com (win-98 version) and this time format used 32kb cluster size and the drive ended up with 22.9 million clusters.

Norton Disk Doctor (NDD32.exe) still crashes with a blue-screen error (Fatal Exception 0E) even when invoked with /NOLBA command-line switch. I'm pretty sure I've seen NDD run on drives with more than 22.9 million clusters, so this result was not expected.

However, Windows-ME version of scandisk (scandskw.exe / dskmaint.dll v4.90.3000) did perform a standard drive test without any issues or error messages (there were no files on the drive - not sure if this makes any difference or not).

It seems that format.com will use and give priority to any cluster-size setting that already exists in the FAT boot sector, perhaps even expecting this value to already be set at runtime (perhaps format.com does not actually set the sectors-per-cluster value in the FAT boot sector).

So I think this shows that format.com will work with drives at least up to 700/750 gb (depending how you define gb) and that Win-me scandisk is also compatible with a single volume of that size (22.9 million clusters). Any or all versions of Microsoft-supplied fdisk.exe are definitely limited to a max drive size of somewhere between 500 to 750 gb (most likely 512gb). Free Fdisk version 1.2.1 is a suggested alternative for drives larger than 512 gb.

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It seems 45 million clusters chokes NDD.EXE. Did you have HIMEM.SYS loaded when you ran it and SCANDISK.EXE?

Yes, himem.sys was in my config.sys.

Cluster size is not defined by Partitioning a Hard Drive. It is set during Formatting.

I have never used Ranish, so it may be doing both.

If possible, have Ranish blank the Partition rather than formatting it, then try FORMAT.COM.

I downloaded something called "Free Fdisk" (Author: Brian E. Reifsnyder) version 1.2.1. I could only find it on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20060110183341/ffdisk.webaps.de/fdisk121.zip

It correctly identified the 750 gb drive and printed it's size correctly on the screen (no funny math or misplaced numbers). I used it to delete and then re-create a single primary FAT32 partition on the 750 gb drive using the max-drive-space option. After re-booting back into DOS, I ran format.com (win-98 version) and this time format used 32kb cluster size and the drive ended up with 22.9 million clusters.

Norton Disk Doctor (NDD32.exe) still crashes with a blue-screen error (Fatal Exception 0E) even when invoked with /NOLBA command-line switch. I'm pretty sure I've seen NDD run on drives with more than 22.9 million clusters, so this result was not expected.

However, Windows-ME version of scandisk (scandskw.exe / dskmaint.dll v4.90.3000) did perform a standard drive test without any issues or error messages (there were no files on the drive - not sure if this makes any difference or not).

It seems that format.com will use and give priority to any cluster-size setting that already exists in the FAT boot sector, perhaps even expecting this value to already be set at runtime (perhaps format.com does not actually set the sectors-per-cluster value in the FAT boot sector).

So I think this shows that format.com will work with drives at least up to 700/750 gb (depending how you define gb) and that Win-me scandisk is also compatible with a single volume of that size (22.9 million clusters). Any or all versions of Microsoft-supplied fdisk.exe are definitely limited to a max drive size of somewhere between 500 to 750 gb (most likely 512gb). Free Fdisk version 1.2.1 is a suggested alternative for drives larger than 512 gb.

FORMAT.COM assumes that the Boot Sector is correct and will not change it if valid. Only by zeroing it out were you able to force FORMAT.COM to create a new one based on Microsoft's algorithm. You have confirmed what I said in my earlier post.

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