FDISK and FORMAT large HDDs

[dencorso]

From the present thread and from hdd size limits?, I think I have enough material to create this summary of what we do know at present about the limits of the different programs related to HDD formating, partitioning and maintenance, so here it goes:

The limit for NDD32.EXE (up to v. 19.0.1.8, from NSW 2008) is somewhere between 7.8 and 7.9 million clusters, or somewhere between 61.0 and 61.7 thousand sectors per FAT (as I now believe it crashes when reading the FATs to a buffer in memory).

The limit for SCANDSKW.EXE (4.90.0.3000) is somewhere between 26.4 and 26.6 million clusters, or somewhere between 206.1 and 207.7 thousand sectors per FAT. It crashed with Marius '95 1 TB raid single partition (link), although 98-Guy has reported it works up to 31.2 million clusters (follow the links inside this post).

SCANDISK.EXE from Win ME works, at least, up to 1 TB, according to Marius '95, and to 31.2 million clusters, according to 98-Guy (both these limits are about the same, for a 1 TB partition, using 32 kiB clusters, has about 31 million clusters).

NDD.EXE for DOS (2002 ..10E) also is reported by the same users as having the same limits as those of SCANDISK.EXE, but that's now doubtful, because it crashes for wsxedcrfv with 22.9 million clusters. In any case, Marius '95, for whom it worked, said it was very slow, so maybe he just didn't wait enough time for it to crash...

FORMAT.EXE works up to, at least 1018 GiB, but above 1TiB a divide error occurs, according to RLoew, in the present thread.

And the limit of Petr's fixed FDISK (based on the FDISK contained in this update: KB263044, which has a numerical display bug) is 512 GB, according to Microsoft (KB280737), and confirmed in the present thread. Suitable alternatives are The Ranish Partition Manager, although it is not adequate to format the partitions it creates, because of defaulting to 16 kiB clusters, or the Free FDISK v. 1.2.1, or Symantec's GDISK (not free), or RLoew's RFDISK (not free).

[BookWorm]

I just tried the Ranish Partition Manager, and it has the same 128 Gig limit as Windows.

[Guest wsxedcrfv]

I just tried the Ranish Partition Manager, and it has the same 128 Gig limit as Windows.

Please provide more details - such as the Ranish version number, the type of drive, interface type (IDE, SATA, other).

My limited experience with Ranish (posted in this thread) was that it was able to partition and format a 750 gb SATA drive.

[dencorso]

I just tried the Ranish Partition Manager, and it has the same 128 Gig limit as Windows.

No, it does *not*! But the BIOS of your machine may have it, and the Ranish Partition Manager depends on the BIOS to work. AFAIK, only RLoew's RFDISK and RFORMAT can work independent of BIOS, in DOS. Always double-check your results for hidden dependencies, in order not to spread misinformation. I have used RPM (v. 2.44 Beta) to sucessfully format and partition two different 500 GB HDDs on two different occasions, and it worked flawlessly in both cases. One of those HDDs (the IOMEGA) I still have with me and it remains in use (more details are in the quotation below).

Well, to be more precise, since you are interested in the model number, it's an

External Hi Speed USB IOMEGA MDHD500-U enclosure with a Hitachi Deskstar HDS725050 500 GB HDD inside

The other HDD I have also tested is actually a multimedia player:

External Hi Speed USB Conceptronic Grab'n'GO CSM3PL with a 3.5" SAMSUNG HD501LJ 500 GB HDD inside.

[dencorso]

And the limit of Petr's fixed FDISK (based on the FDISK contained in this update: KB263044, which has a numerical display bug) is 512 GB, according to Microsoft (KB280737), and confirmed in the present thread. Suitable alternatives are The Ranish Partition Manager, although it is not adequate to format the partitions it creates, because of defaulting to 16 kiB clusters, or the Free FDISK v. 1.2.1, or Symantec's GDISK (not free), or RLoew's RFDISK (not free).

The Ranish Partition Manager, although it is not adequate to format the partitions it creates, because of defaulting to 16 kiB, still remains the best free partitioning tool. Nowadays, I'm convinced v. 2.44 is the best one to use. However, until recently, the only free formatting tool I knew of that's capable of reformatting using a user defined sectors-per-cluster number, regardless of how the partition was originally formatted, was Ridgecrop's fat32format (which is needs a NT-family OS to work), since the undocumented /Z switch of the MS Format refuses to work. This may have changed, thanks to Udo Kuhnt and his DR-DOS/OpenDOS Enhancement Project!

To format FAT12/16/32 drives, you can use the new DR FORMAT command v1.0 (source or binary). This is based on FreeDOS FORMAT v0.91u with added support for 128K cluster size and some other enhancements; use the new option /C:clsize to override the default cluster size.

So, please, do test the new free DR FORMAT v1.0 (see quote above for download link) and report. If it works OK, we now have a DOS only way of doing it.

[rloew]

To format FAT12/16/32 drives, you can use the new DR FORMAT command v1.0 (source orbinary). This is based on FreeDOS FORMAT v0.91u with added support for 128K cluster size and some other enhancements; use the new option /C:clsize to override the default cluster size.

So, please, do test the new free DR FORMAT v1.0 (see quote above for download link) and report. If it works OK, we now have a DOS only way of doing it.

I don't know about some of the other DOSes mentioned, but MS-DOS and Windows 9x definitely will not support 128KB Clusters without my Patches. Windows XP will not support 256 Sector Clusters unless Patched.

[dencorso]

True enough. But what interested me was its purported ability to overcome the standard 16k clusters used by RPM in a easy way. My ideia is to use it to set 32k clusters at maximum, regardless of the rather exotic settings it's purported to also accept. Moreover it seems able to set cluster sizes also for FAT-12 and FAT-16, which is less useful, even if interesting.

[rloew]

True enough. But what interested me was its purported ability to overcome the standard 16k clusters used by RPM in a easy way. My ideia is to use it to set 32k clusters at maximum, regardless of the rather exotic settings it's purported to also accept. Moreover it seems able to set cluster sizes also for FAT-12 and FAT-16, which is less useful, even if interesting.

The 16KB Cluster limit of RPM is strictly due to choices made by the Author. Any formatter that support 32KB Clusters should work. My RFORMAT Program uses Microsoft's guideline by default but can be manually set from 512 Bytes to 8MiB per Cluster. Setting Cluster size on FAT-16 can be useful. I was able to use a 4GB CF Card in an old Camera by setting 64KiB Clusters.