NT4 48-Bit LBA?

[BookWorm]

I searched the forum and didn't find it. Is there a 48-Bit LBA upgrade for Windows NT4? Where do I get it?

[allen2]

To my knowledge, there isn't a fix for ide drives using atapi.sys.

But this wasn't a problem for most scsi drivers.

[awergh]

I don't know of a fix for atapi.sys however there is an alternative driver you can use.

Universal ATA driver for Windows NT3.51/NT4/2000/XP

With PATA/SATA support

http://alter.org.ua/soft/win/uni_ata/

This driver should work however I haven't actually tested it myself.

[BookWorm]

Thanks, I'll try that now.

This will probably win an award for the stupidest question of the day, but I've won lots of those awards.

How do I partition a hard drive under NT4? 2k has a disk management program, 98 has FDisk, but I can't find those in NT4.

[BookWorm]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now I get stuck at the blue screen. The only way to get away from it is to pull the plug and eject the battery.

[leviathan]

How do I partition a hard drive under NT4? 2k has a disk management program, 98 has FDisk, but I can't find those in NT4.

Bookworm,

Go to Start > Programs > Administrative Tools > Disk Administrator. That is the NT4 disk partitioning utility.

Also, where did that blue screen come from? From the updated file or opening Disk Administrator?

[awergh]

I'm guessing he installed the driver and it didn't quite work out for some reason.

Can you boot with last known good configuration?

[BookWorm]

> Also, where did that blue screen come from?

When it first boots, before I get to a graphic screen, there is a blue text screen showing the version and some .'s as it boots. The .'s stop appearing and it just sits there.

> Can you boot with last known good configuration?

I tried, and it did the same thing.

[awergh]

oh I thought you were getting a BSOD your just stuck at the loading screen hmm,

Is this after installing a new driver?

[BookWorm]

> Is this after installing a new driver?

Yes, the first thing that happened. I'm going to try reinstalling from CD. (98 is working fine.)

[BookWorm]

That not only worked, but it started up in the same windows that were open when I installed the driver. The disk administrator only shows existing partitions, (2 gig FAT16 and 8 gig fat32) no empty space. FDisk does better than that. The FAT32 driver is working perfectly, and except for going through the BIOS (128 gig limit) the 98 big hard drive upgrade works perfectly. So this little disaster is unusual.

Did I do something wrong, or do I need to find a different driver? If it matters, I'm using an IBM ThinkPad 240, 400Mhz Celeron, 320Mb RAM, 320 Gig IDE hard drive.

[awergh]

Did you use the stable version or the beta version? I really should try out that driver but I'm busy with study still so I can't try it out at the moment.

[BookWorm]

I used the latest stable version.

[pointertovoid]

Please take my answer with caution, because I have nearly zero experience with Nt4, only 95-98-Me-2k and a bit Xp.

I believe to have understood that Nt4 accesses the disk (or the host) like 95-98-Me do: using the interrupts provided by the Bios, instead of having its own functions as W2k began to do. (Or did this change with some SP?)

So the Lba28 limit would work like in W95-98-Me: it depends on the Bios, not on Windows. As soon as the Bios provides the Lba48 mode, Nt4 would access disks over 128GB, as W95-98-Me do (observed experimentally, including W95b). The Lba28 limit in Windows itself appeared with W2k (and Xp) and was corrected by an SP.

In the W95-98-Me (and Nt4?) case, flashing the Bios to Lba48 (if possible) is not the only answer, and not necessarily the best one. Among many others:

- An Ide host, possibly added on the Pci, whose Bios understands the Lba48, is enough to access >128GiB, and often improves speed; the best for 4* Pata/133 on 32b Pci is by far the SiI0680a, <10$ on eBay from Hong Kong.

- If you have an Intel host of the right epoch, installing the driver Intel Application Accelerator is enough.

- Disk manufacturers provide "Overlay software" or "Installation software" that, just as the Intel App Accel, replaces the limited Int13h provided by the Bios.

In any case, it is vital that you install your Windows in a smaller volume wholly accessible by the Bios-OS-SP0 prior to any improvement, especially to enable repairs. But as Nt4 (really?) limits this volume to 4GiB, the Lba28 limit shouldn't be attained.

There are tricks (I didn't try them) to provide the Sp6a's Atapi.sys on an F6 diskette (pretending it's a hardware driver) when installing Nt4 gold, which is allegedly impossible to slipstream with its SP (I didn't investigate), and whose Sp were never included in the install disk (again a rumour I didn't check).

UniAta was developed for Nt4 and is claimed to improve many such worries, but I tried it briefly on W2k and it didn't work quickly.

W95-98-Me-2k-Xp32 are also limited to disks of 2^32 sectors, which translates to 2TiB disks (not volumes) with sectors of 512B. W2k3 can access bigger disks in some cases, and V-7 often (non-MBR type partition). This will probably be the real limit for Nt4. Disk manufacturers have agreed that above 2TiB, sectors will have 4kiB instead of 512B, so these Windows may - perhaps - who knows - access >2TiB... Then, we'll begin to see what parts of Windows and the applications took care that sector size could change: expect most of them to fail...

Fingers crossed!

[pointertovoid]

A very good source for Lba48 is

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

Unfortunately, it's radically false about W95 and tells nothing about Nt4, except "UniAta".

Via's driver seems to do the same for Lba48 as Intel's Application Accelerator. Though if you have a Via host, the best update isn't a driver or a Bios, but an added host from a different manufacturer.