Ext HDD's greater than 137GB under Win ME

[dencorso]

If you're familiar with FDISK, the FreeFDISK will present no problems to your using it. You should try it. Afterwards, Win 9x/ME will assign letters to the unformatted partitions, so you can format them from the Windows Explorer menu.

[piikea]

If you're familiar with FDISK, the FreeFDISK will present no problems to your using it. You should try it. Afterwards, Win 9x/ME will assign letters to the unformatted partitions, so you can format them from the Windows Explorer menu.

FreeFDISK looks/acts the same as FDISK - is there any reason to think it would work when FDISk didn't?

[dencorso]

FreeFDISK looks/acts the same as FDISK - is there any reason to think it would work when FDISk didn't?

Yes! The best of reasons. Facts.

If you had followed my cross-thread quote in Post #8 (of this thread) to it's source, you'd know, by now, that wsxedcrfv tested successfully FreeFDISK 1.2.1 with a 750 GB HDD, as he reported in Post #44 of the thread FDISK and FORMAT large HDDs. This is a fact.

As for the Ranish Partition Manager, I've reported using it to partition only HDDs up to 500 GB, but, more recently, I've bought an External USB 2.0 Seagate Expansion 1500 GB drive [with a Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS (5900 rmm) 1500 GB HDD inside], which I partitioned sucessfully with RPM 2.43, although I wasn't able to solve the problem of RPM using 16 kiB clusters in DOS, so I reformated the partitions with FAT32FORMAT, under XP to get them to use 32 kiB clusters. This is a fact.

However, I've only zeroed out the main boot sector and forgot about the backup boot sector of FAT-32, so FORMAT may have taken the sectors per cluster value from the backup boot sector and reformated using 16 kiB again. But I'm sure that zeroing out the first 32 sectors in each partition would be enough to convince the DOS FORMAT to use 32 kiB clusters. This is speculation, but I'm confident it's solid.

So, at present I'm convinced that FreeFDISK may be the best free choice. Then you may format with the Win ME (DOS 8.0) FORMAT, or use FreeFORMAT, or format using the Windows Explorer. In any case, since the FreeFDISK will not have formatted the partitions you create, any of those formatters will use 32 kiB clusters as the default. Only RPM has a fixation in 16 kiB clusters.

[jaclaz]

If you had followed my cross-thread quote in Post #8 (of this thread) to it's source, you'd know, by now, that

Well, also, if anyone had followed my direct link to here:

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

he might have found that SwissKnife is tested for single partitions up to 500 Gb.

So, for making three 460 Gb partitions it should be allright.

Should anyone want to experiment, there is also this thingy, that I have tested with good results (but NOT with such a big partition ):

http://partitionlogic.org.uk/

http://partitionlogic.org.uk/about/preview.html

But I'm sure that zeroing out the first 32 sectors in each partition would be enough to convince the DOS FORMAT to use 32 kiB clusters. This is speculation, but I'm confident it's solid.

Why 32?

(being that the bootsector is 1st sector and backup is 6th one?)

jaclaz

[dencorso]

Why 32?

(being that the bootsector is 1st sector and backup is 6th one?)

Because, here, I favor the good old principle of "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out!"

The bootsector is the 1st sector (= sector 0) but the backup is the 7th sector (= sector 6)...

Moreover, the boot code is split and overflows to the 3rd sector (= sector 2) and its backup is duly at the 9th sector (= sector 8), whith the intervening sectors being the FSInfo (at sector 1) and its backup (at sector 7). All other sectors in the first 32 are usually zeroed out already, so there is no need, nor, however, any harm in zeroing them out. IMHO, if one zeroes out all 32, there's no need to count sectors and decide which to zero out.

[piikea]

I have cross referenced the various threads but that just tends to confuse the matter! Anyway, FreeFDISK seems to have created partitions (correctly? - I'm not sure) however the OS hasn't assigned letters to the unformatted partitions. Perhaps after formatting

Edited September 16, 2010 by piikea

[dencorso]

Disconnect, wait for, say, 1 min, and then reconnect. The letters should be assigned.

[piikea]

Disconnect, wait for, say, 1 min, and then reconnect. The letters should be assigned.

Unfortunately I have disconnected & rebooted several times but still not working.

In FreeFDISK it shows, when I choose "display drive information" (or something similar to that), the 4 partitions created but the 1st 2 partitions were "assigned" drive letters that are already "taken" by other drives already on the system. Unsure if that is involved in the not being recognized issue.

[dencorso]

Let me understand better what you're doing. Did you use FreeFDISK from inside a DOS Box within Win ME?

Or is your BIOS capable of recognizing the USB disk unassisted and you've partitioned it in true DOS (say, from a DOS boot disk)? And which USBSTOR.INF are you using, the one I posted or the original Win ME one?

Reboot into Win ME with the drive disconnected. Then connect it and let Win ME recognize and mount it. You ought to get sensible letters for all your partition, now, even thr unformatted ones.

[piikea]

Let me understand better what you're doing. Did you use FreeFDISK from inside a DOS Box within Win ME?

Used FreeDISK from DOS box inside Win ME.

Or is your BIOS capable of recognizing the USB disk unassisted & you've partitioned it in true DOS (say, from a DOS boot disk)?

Didn't partition in "true DOS".

As to BIOS & "unassisted" - idk.

I have a diff ext HD that requires a disk w/ special drivers on it to be recognized by Norton Ghost for example.

And which USBSTOR.INF are you using, the one I posted or the original Win ME one?

Replaced original with the one you posted.

Reboot into Win ME with the drive disconnected. Then connect it & let Win ME recognize & mount it. You ought to get sensible letters for all your partition, now, even the unformatted ones.

Did this but didn't work. Something is still amiss.

[dencorso]

With the 1 TB HDD disconnected, enter the Device Manager and jot down the identifier strings it gives for your HDDs that are working OK.

Then try going into safe mode, and deleting all strange other HDDs that may appear in the Device Manager.

You may have a leftover from previous blorked detections.

Then get back to Normal Mode again, and connect the 1 TB HDD, and let's hope it gets detected OK.

If this does not work, I'll have to muse over it some more. For now this is the last hypothesis that occurs to me.

[piikea]

You may have a leftover from previous blorked detections.

In case this makes a difference on how to proceed, I should've been more specific about the "already assigned drives" - they are a dvd burner & a cd-rom - each assigned a drive letter (the last ones). So, for whatever reason the 1st 2 partitions were "assigned" those same letters? Instead of starting from the next unused letter available.

[dencorso]

Now you gave me an idea: enter Device Manager, select each of those optical media drives, then go to Properties and check whether they are assigned fixed letters. Even if they aren't, assign one to "Z", and the other to "Y", so they get out of the way, and let's see what happens.

[jaclaz]

The bootsector is the 1st sector (= sector 0) but the backup is the 7th sector (= sector 6)...

Yep, usual mistake betweenLBA and numerals, my bad.

Right are of course LBA 0 and LBA 6 or 1st and 7th.

Because, here, I favor the good old principle of "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out!"

Moreover, the boot code is split and overflows to the 3rd sector (= sector 2) and its backup is duly at the 9th sector (= sector 8), whith the intervening sectors being the FSInfo (at sector 1) and its backup (at sector 7). All other sectors in the first 32 are usually zeroed out already, so there is no need, nor, however, any harm in zeroing them out. IMHO, if one zeroes out all 32, there's no need to count sectors and decide which to zero out.

There is (AFAIK) NO relevant info about cluster size ANYWHERE but on those two sectors, , so, since as you know I am very cheap I would first try blanking just LBA 0, then LBA 0 and LBA 6, then LBA 0÷6 (and nothing more).

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/MSWIN41.htm

To really overdo it, you can wipe LBA 0÷8...., a neat "saving" of 23 sectors

Edit:

Before I forget, you may be interested in playing a bit with good ol'diskman:

http://www.diskman.co.uk/

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=100299&st=16

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=141335

....

Quickly format FAT volumes as FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32

Support for hard disks/partitions up to 2TB

....

jaclaz

Edited September 16, 2010 by jaclaz

[dencorso]

Just zeroing out LBA 0 doesn't work. I tried that and the DOS 8.0 (ME) FORMAT reformatted using 16 kiB clusters. But when I did that I was very tired and sleepy, after a truly long day at work, and I simply forgot about LBA 6, so I left it alone. I do believe you're right, so probably zeroing out just LBA 0 and LBA 6 ought to suffice for getting FORMAT to fall back to its default and use 32 kiB clusters. But I don't have any Big HDD at hand right now (without important content inside) to test it. My two 500 GiB are about half-full and the 1.5 TB is 1/3 full with data I cannot discard, and it would be too tiresome to move that much data around just to liberate one of them for testing. Of course I could liberate just a single partition, but messing around with HDDs containing data you cannot afford to lose is courting disaster. So it'll have to wait some more, for a better opportunity.