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Max Size Of Hard Drive That 98SE Can Handle


Bug_zs

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Guys,

I'm currently using a Seagate 500GB 16MB Cache 7200.9 PATA in

my Windows98SE box.

I'm running out of room and want to get a bigger SATA

hard drive, using a SATA Hard Drive To IDE On MoBo Adapter.

I'm going for the SATA as they are MUCH cheaper than PATA's now,

and I can use it in my future Windows 7 "Ultimate Build".

What is the max number of Gigs that 98SE can handle?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Bug_zs

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Guys,

I'm currently using a Seagate 500GB 16MB Cache 7200.9 PATA in

my Windows98SE box.

I'm running out of room and want to get a bigger SATA

hard drive, using a SATA Hard Drive To IDE On MoBo Adapter.

I'm going for the SATA as they are MUCH cheaper than PATA's now,

and I can use it in my future Windows 7 "Ultimate Build".

What is the max number of Gigs that 98SE can handle?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Bug_zs

By Default Windows 98SE supports up to 137GB (128GiB) IDE Drives.

If you are using 500GB successfully then you are using either a third party driver or have a Patched Driver.

If you want to use SATA Drives without an Adapter you will need my SATA Patch.

There is a bug in Windows 98SE that can cause problems if you create a single Partition larger than 1TiB.

If you use two or more Partitions then you can use up to 2TiB.

Beyond 2TiB you will need my TBPLUS Package and may need another SATA to IDE adapter.

Be aware that some Motherboards may choke on drives larger than 548GB.

Edited by rloew
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well, since MS-DOS interrupt itself usualy only offer 32bit logical sectors addressing ...

is it sufficient to have partitions that have less than 2^32 -1 sectors, where total sectors for that hard-drive actually exceeded that value?

Edited by Joseph_sw
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No. A patched ESDI_506.PDR for PATA and RLoew's patch for SATA are needed regardless (unless you have a VIA RAID controller, for which there is a SATA driver).

Why not keep your present drive and add another 500 GB drive? 2 HDDs are better than 1! :D

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Well. I'm using a 500GB SATA drive connected through PPATA to SATA adapter along with a 1TB drive connected through a PCI SATA SiI 3512 controller.

Intel chipsets with Intel Application Accelerator driver package do not use windows 98 ESDI_506.PDR. So no other software patches are necesary to get around the 137MB limit..

The PCI SATA controllers do have their own drivers and are not affected by ESDI_506.PDR 137GB limitation in general.

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well, since MS-DOS interrupt itself usualy only offer 32bit logical sectors addressing ...

is it sufficient to have partitions that have less than 2^32 -1 sectors, where total sectors for that hard-drive actually exceeded that value?

No. The 32-Bit limit is absolute, not Partition size related.

The Interrupt 13 Code must support 48 Bits as well as the Windows Driver, and the DOS and Windows Filesystems have to be Patched also.

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If you want every app to work, partition it in one primary and 3 logical partitions inside one extended partition. Each partition will be about 250 GB. If you don't mind being unable to use defrag and scandskw (nor norton system works alternatives), for instance, because you can do that in XP, then you may use just 2 partitions, one primary and one logical partition inside one extended partition. Each partition will be just under 500 GB. I do prefer using more partitions smaller than 320 GB for all my fixed disks, but use partitons of about 500 GB for the removable ones. DOS and Win 9x/ME will cope well with either, the problem are the maintenance apps, not the OS.

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The size of the primary partition can be 250 GB or more, up to about 320 GB.

As I said, the problem with partition sizes is related to apps, not the OS.

Now, for a 1 TB drive, there is one more, much more serious problem, which is *not* related to partition sizes, but to the size of the whole disk, no matter how you partition it: 48-bit LBA support!

So, now:

1) If your machine has BIOS support for 48-bit LBA, DOS should be fine.

2) For Win 9x/ME, if the disk is PATA (aka IDE) you need either LLXX's or RLoew's ESDI_506.PDR patch, unless your chipset is Intel, for which the Intel Application Accelerator gets you covered.

3) For Win 9x/ME, if the disk is SATA you need either VIA RAID driver, if your machine has a VIA chipset, or the manufacturer's driver, for the rare other chipsets that support SATA on Win 9x/ME

4) Else, for Win 9x/ME, you need RLoew's SATA patch, for SATA.

5) For USB in Win 9x/ME you'll need NUSB33 plus MDGx's USB20DRV and some tweaking in addition.

That's about it.

To verify whether you do have BIOS 48-bit LBA support, the best test, once the HDD is already hooked to the motherboard, is a little DOS program provided by RLoew for free, inside the demo version of his ESDI_506.PDR patch.

More details can be found in my > 137 GB thread, linked from the right part of my signature.

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Guest wsxedcrfv

By Default Windows 98SE supports up to 137GB (128GiB) IDE Drives.

You can't make such a statement without explicitly stating the drive interface being used.

Windows 98 clearly is compatible with very large drives and a very large number of clusters - way beyond 4.17 million (the number often quoted incorrectly by Microsoft as the largest number of clusters that DOS scandisk can handle).

Windows 98's native 32-bit protected mode driver (ESDI_506.PDR) limits windows 98 to 137 gb IDE drives. If you remove that file and force Windows 98 to use DOS-mode drive access, then the limit will probably be much larger (1 or 2 tb). This is assuming we are talking about a motherboard made during or after 2002 that is LBA-48 compliant.

With regard to external USB drives - I'm not sure if ESDI_506.PDR plays any role accessing those drives.

Intel's Application Accelerator driver package contains a replacement for ESDI_506.PDR for some chipsets. I wouldn't exactly call that a "3'rd party" solution.

If you want to use SATA Drives without an Adapter you will need my SATA Patch.

That is also wrong in some or in most cases. Motherboards made between 2003 and 2006 that have integrated SATA-I controllers will have Windows-98 drivers for those controllers, meaning that your SATA patch will not be needed.

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By Default Windows 98SE supports up to 137GB (128GiB) IDE Drives.

You can't make such a statement without explicitly stating the drive interface being used.

Windows 98 clearly is compatible with very large drives and a very large number of clusters - way beyond 4.17 million (the number often quoted incorrectly by Microsoft as the largest number of clusters that DOS scandisk can handle).

Windows 98's native 32-bit protected mode driver (ESDI_506.PDR) limits windows 98 to 137 gb IDE drives. If you remove that file and force Windows 98 to use DOS-mode drive access, then the limit will probably be much larger (1 or 2 tb). This is assuming we are talking about a motherboard made during or after 2002 that is LBA-48 compliant.

With regard to external USB drives - I'm not sure if ESDI_506.PDR plays any role accessing those drives.

Intel's Application Accelerator driver package contains a replacement for ESDI_506.PDR for some chipsets. I wouldn't exactly call that a "3'rd party" solution.

I said "Default" which means Motherboard IDE and ESDI_506.PDR enabled.

USB Drives do not use ESDI_506.PDR. Support depends upon the USB Controller in the Enclosure. Some older ones did not support more than 137GB.

Intel is a third party.

If you want to use SATA Drives without an Adapter you will need my SATA Patch.

That is also wrong in some or in most cases. Motherboards made between 2003 and 2006 that have integrated SATA-I controllers will have Windows-98 drivers for those controllers, meaning that your SATA patch will not be needed.

True. But this is 2010 so these Motherboards are going to be getting harder and harder to find. Newer ones do not provide Drivers.

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this is 2010 so these Motherboards are going to be getting harder and harder to find.
OT: I had bought a dozen Asus P5PE-VM motherboards about 2 years ago, just in case, but they can still be found. I don't know whether recent CPUs work under Win98, if they are not on the Win98-compatibility list of the motherboard.
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  • 3 weeks later...

Recently I've encountered a problem with 250GB primary partition. The amount of data stored there was growing. When it reached about 200GB the system failed to boot one day. It looked like the system registry became corrupted. Restoration of the saved registry files did not helped. The boot failed in exactly the same way.

I had a copy of Windows and Program Files folders stored at the same partition. So, I was able to get the system working in an instant. However, further experiment revealed interesting behavior. I tried to add another copy of the system folders on the primary partition, but trying to boot from the new copy was always ending with a blue screen and system registry corruption. Since the same file set was working perfectly at the same time, the only logical explanation was the system files were placed at different parts of the partition. The newest copy was placed at the end, while the older somewhere at the beginning.

Finally I freed enough space and reduced the primary partition size below 128GB. I was able to add the third working copy of the system files, then.

Before the failure of the main system folder set, everything was working perfectly with two SATA hard drives. The first one 500GB is connected through an SATA to ATA adaptor to Intel 845 motherboard with Intel Application Accelerator installed. The second one 1TB is connected to PCI SATA SiI 3512 controller. Both hard drives were fully accessible from Windows and DOS. So, 32bit mode drivers and BIOS were working correctly. No file system corruption happened, so far.

It appears, there is some weak point during the kernel boot, when the system can crash if the primary partition size is greater than 128GB. If some system files are placed too high on the large partition it can cause the boot failure and registry corruption on otherwise fully functional system.

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