Ext HDD's greater than 137GB under Win ME

[piikea]

So, after reading through 2 separate threads regarding this topic (& admittedly thoroughly confusing myself by the end) - I proceed to download the NUSB 3.3 & it says its not compatible with my OS ??

I already use an 80GB ext HDD via USB 2.0 with no issues but a new WD 1TB ext HDD is not being recognized by the system (i.e, assigned the next available drive letter as is the 80GB one is). It will need formatting once it is & partitioned (unfortunately) in 250GB (or less) segments as stated in one of the threads about that.

[dencorso]

NUSB is from ME originally. You don't need it if you have ME... well, sort of. You may benefit from its tweaked USBSTOR.INF... Just rename the original and drop in the file from NUSB. Or, better still, grab the most up-to-date version of it from this post. If that isn't enough, get the HDD's VID&PID, using USBView, and let's add it to USBSTOR.INF.

[piikea]

NUSB is from ME originally. You don't need it if you have ME... well, sort of. You may benefit from its tweaked USBSTOR.INF... Just rename the original and drop in the file from NUSB. Or, better still, grab the most up-to-date version of it from this post. If that isn't enough, get the HDD's VID&PID, using USBView, and let's add it to USBSTOR.INF.

Opening usbstor110c.7z it asks to add it to archive which I don't understand so probably didn't get that part right. Instead I tried downloading usbstor110c.zip & replaced my existing USBSTOR.INF file w/ that one but HDD still isn't recognized.

USBVIEW.EXE provided ->

Device Descriptor:

bcdUSB: 0x0200

bDeviceClass: 0x00

bDeviceSubClass: 0x00

bDeviceProtocol: 0x00

bMaxPacketSize0: 0x40 (64)

idVendor: 0x152D

idProduct: 0x2329

bcdDevice: 0x0100

iManufacturer: 0x01

iProduct: 0x02

iSerialNumber: 0x05

bNumConfigurations: 0x01

ConnectionStatus: DeviceConnected

Current Config Value: 0x01

Device Bus Speed: High

Device Address: 0x01

Open Pipes: 2

Endpoint Descriptor:

bEndpointAddress: 0x81 IN

Transfer Type: Bulk

wMaxPacketSize: 0x0200 (512)

bInterval: 0x00

Endpoint Descriptor:

bEndpointAddress: 0x02 OUT

Transfer Type: Bulk

wMaxPacketSize: 0x0200 (512)

bInterval: 0x00

Just add this to the bottom of USBSTOR.INF?

(BTW - it shows that a USB device is attached AND shows under Device Manager under Disk Drives - by its serial # I'm guessing(?) but not being assigned a drive letter).

Edited September 12, 2010 by piikea

[dencorso]

Try again using the attached USBSTOR.INF and see whether it makes any difference.

If it doesn't, it's possible that your disk is formatted to NTFS from factory. Or not formatted at all.

Do you know how to use the Ranish Partition Manager? Do you have access to a Windows XP (or 2k) machine?

You'll probably have to repartition/reformat the HDD before it gets a letter (or more) assigned to it.

usbstor110dp.zip

[piikea]

Replaced with file in usbstor110dp.zip but unfortunately still not recognizing it. Strange that it is "seen" in Device Manager. I don't think it's preformatted since it was a bare drive I put into an ext enclosure.

I don't have Ranish Partition Manager nor access to a Windows XP (or 2k) machine.

[dencorso]

It's behaving as it should! If there is no partition defined, it won't get a letter!

Here's how to solve it. Take a lot of care not to partition/format the wrong HDD. The first one RPM will show you usually is your boot disk. Once inside RPM, use F5 to move from HDD to HDD... press it once and wait, it sometimes lags a little before changing to the next HDD. After the screen changes, if it's not yet the Right HDD, then press F5 again. If you have just one internal HDD, pressing F5 once should move you to the USB HDD. The USB HDDs usually appear after all internal HDDs. >>> Whatever you do, you'll be doing it on your sole responsibility and by your own decision, not because I said so. <<< You've been warned.

[piikea]

It's behaving as it should! If there is no partition defined, it won't get a letter!

Here's how to solve it. Take a lot of care not to partition/format the wrong HDD. The first one RPM will show you usually is your boot disk. Once inside RPM, use F5 to move from HDD to HDD... press it once and wait, it sometimes lags a little before changing to the next HDD. After the screen changes, if it's not yet the Right HDD, then press F5 again. If you have just one internal HDD, pressing F5 once should move you to the USB HDD. The USB HDDs usually appear after all internal HDDs. >>> Whatever you do, you'll be doing it on your sole responsibility and by your own decision, not because I said so. <<< You've been warned.

Prior to trying RPM I tried "seeing" the 1TB ext HDD at the MS DOS prompt (see attached screenshot) which seems to show a 3rd HDD which I assume would be it - however - the corresponding numbers don't make sense & can't be right??

the system is configured:

Disk 1 is internal HDD #1 = 80GB partitioned C: to J:

Disk 2 is internal HDD #2 = 80GB not partitioned, system labeled it D:

Disk 3 is ?? the 1TB ext HDD?

the numbers 43977 & 94397 seem incorrect (1,024GB should be higher, no??)

Edited September 12, 2010 by piikea

[dencorso]

Sure. But, as I've alrady said, once again things are behaving as expected:

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).

STFF! BTW, if you like FDISK, the FreeFDISK may be the tool of choice for you.

[TmEE]

how about Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 ?

I generally have used that to do fun stuff with storage devices, though not anything bigger than 250GB...

[piikea]

how about Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 ?

I generally have used that to do fun stuff with storage devices, though not anything bigger than 250GB...

I think I may be able to get access to a Windows XP machine so based on denarco's experience (in another thread) - it will necessary or preferable to keep partitions no larger than 250GB each?

[TmEE]

I meant that I have not had drives bigger than 250GB, so I have no idea what does it do with larger drives... my windows install is trashed so I cannot check its help etc. to know... currently preparing a 120GB HDD to recive Windows 98SE

[dencorso]

I think I may be able to get access to a Windows XP machine so based on denarco's experience (in another thread) - it will necessary or preferable to keep partitions no larger than 250GB each?

If you want to be able to defrag from Win 9x, yes.

If you can live with not being able to do it, you may create just 3 partitions of about 460GB.

BTW, if you're going to partition it on XP, you'll then need FAT32FORMAT.EXE, in order to be able to format the partitions to FAT-32 under XP.

[Ponch]

the numbers 43977 & 94397 seem incorrect (1,024GB should be higher, no??)

the system was not made for such capacity and obviously cannot display all digits in the columns.

Due to the rounding (1024 vs 1k), 943.977 seems correct.

[jaclaz]

BTW, if you're going to partition it on XP, you'll then need FAT32FORMAT.EXE, in order to be able to format the partitions to FAT-32 under XP.

To be picky, "in order to be able to format partitions larger than 32 Gb to FAT-32 under XP".

For the record, there is also Tokiwa FAT32 formatter (GUI):

http://tokiwa.qee.jp/EN/Fat32Formatter/

and SwissKnife:

http://www.compuapps.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112:swiss-knife-v322&catid=48:drive-managment&Itemid=193

that works allright under Win9x/Me.

jaclaz

[piikea]

the numbers 43977 & 94397 seem incorrect (1,024GB should be higher, no??)

the system was not made for such capacity and obviously cannot display all digits in the columns.

Due to the rounding (1024 vs 1k), 943.977 seems correct.

Yes, you're right about that. Makes sense now.

Tried partitioning w/ FDISK but none of the partitions "took" - idk why not. I have access to a Windows 7 machine soon & maybe it will work there.