Can Win-98 low-disk-space check be disabled?

[Nomen]

Win-98 seems to have a hard-coded threshold of 3% free disk space that I can't find any way to reduce or disable.

This is not the same as changing the settings for the Disk Cleanup tool. Disabling the activation of that tool when free disk space reaches the 3% mark does not seem to prevent the OS from generating "disk full" messages when you want to copy files to the affected drive - or when applications are attempting to write to the affected drive.

I came across some mention of this Explorer registry value:

NoLowDiskSpaceChecks (set to value 1)

But my win-98 system doesn't seem to pay any attention to it.

I've got a 700 gb drive, and it's got about 22 gb free, but win-98 won't allow any more files to be written to it. Ordinarily, you would think that having 22 gb of free disk space wouldn't be a problem...

Is this a known issue for win-98, and is there a solution?

Or must I simply live with the fact that 22 gb of this drive is unusable?

[submix8c]

I have a question - how did you defeat the 137gb barrier? You may be treading on dangerous ground...

Edited July 7, 2012 by submix8c

[jaclaz]

Is this a known issue for win-98, and is there a solution?

Yes/maybe.

See here:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article03-102

Using the DisableLowDiskSpaceBroadcast Registry entry should do:

http://support.microsoft.com/?ID=KB;EN-US;q188074

jaclaz

[Nomen]

I have a question - how did you defeat the 137gb barrier? You may be treading on dangerous ground...

This is a SATA hard drive connected to a SiL 3512 controller, using the driver file SI3112r.mpd. I thought it was common knowledge that win-98 is fully compatible with most SATA-1 controller hardware and that no special drivers are needed because those controllers came with win-98 drivers, allowing them to be used in native SATA mode (not IDE emulation mode).

[Nomen]

See here: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article03-102

Using the DisableLowDiskSpaceBroadcast Registry entry should do:

http://support.microsoft.com/?ID=KB;EN-US;q188074

The registry key "DisableLowDiskSpaceBroadcast" is probably used by the Disk Cleanup utility. Mine is currently set to 12 - indicating drives C and D are not to invoke the cleanup tool upon reaching the low-disk-space criteria. I currently have the cleanup utility deactivated on those 2 drives, but win-98 will still generates "disk full" errors when I try to copy files (even relatively small files) from the C to the D drive.

[submix8c]

This is a SATA hard drive connected to a SiL 3512 controller, using the driver file SI3112r.mpd. I thought it was common knowledge that win-98 is fully compatible with most SATA-1 controller hardware and that no special drivers are needed because those controllers came with win-98 drivers, allowing them to be used in native SATA mode (not IDE emulation mode).

True, but you didn't say so... So the knowledge wasn't available in the first post.

I've got a 700 gb drive...

[jaclaz]

True, but you didn't say so... So the knowledge wasn't available in the first post.

I've got a 700 gb drive...

Additionally, no information was given about how the 700 GB was partitioned formatted, nor whether the 22 Gb free were on a single partition, etc....

And of course though it may be "common knowledge" that SiL 3512 contollers allow "native SATA" mode on Windows 98 , this wasn't specified and not necessarily it represents a solution to the varios "big sized drives" under Windows 98.

You might want to appreciate the dubitative form of my maybe in my reply to the OP.

jaclaz

[Nomen]

Additionally, no information was given about how the 700 GB was partitioned formatted, nor whether the 22 Gb free were on a single partition, etc....

And of course though it may be "common knowledge" that SiL 3512 contollers allow "native SATA" mode on Windows 98 , this wasn't specified and not necessarily it represents a solution to the varios "big sized drives" under Windows 98.

You might want to appreciate the dubitative form of my maybe in my reply to the OP.

I thought that saying the drive was 700 gb, and had 22 gb free was sufficient information.

Please accept my apology if I didn't say that it was a SATA drive being controlled and used in native SATA mode, and that it was formatted as a single primary FAT32 partition with 732,395,680 kilobytes total disk space, 23,095,744 kilobytes free, 32kb cluster size, 22,887,365 total clusters on disk, 721,742 available clusters. Is there any other information that is necessary in order to arrive at an answer to my original question?

Or perhaps nobody here has encountered this phenomena before?

[Arminius]

Please accept my apology if I didn't say that it was a SATA drive being controlled and used in native SATA mode, and that it was formatted as a single primary FAT32 partition with 732,395,680 kilobytes total disk space, 23,095,744 kilobytes free, 32kb cluster size, 22,887,365 total clusters on disk, 721,742 available clusters. Is there any other information that is necessary in order to arrive at an answer to my original question?

Or perhaps nobody here has encountered this phenomena before?

That is pretty risky. Installing Windows on a much smaller active partition with the bulk of your data on an extended partition would be safer in the event Windows became corrupted and failed to boot. I hope you have another computer you can connect your drive to in the event you have a problem and need to salvage your data....or at least a rescue/utility CD.

For the problem at hand, did you try reducing the percentage of space reserved for the recycle bin?

[Multibooter]

Disabling the [Disk Cleanup tool] ... does not seem to prevent the OS from generating "disk full" messages... I've got a 700 gb drive, and it's got about 22 gb free

Hi Nomen,

I would create an image backup of the HDD, before fiddling around any further. On my external HDDs I am using 192GB FAT32 partitions, on internal HDDs much smaller FAT32 partitions. My first guess would be that your problem is caused by a partition too large for Win98, without using special patches.

1) Does the "disk full" message still come up under Win98 if you set the HDD to Removable (Device Manager: -> select the HDD -> Properties -> Settings tab -> select Removable) and then reboot?

On my old Inspiron 7500 laptop, when I use a 2nd internal PATA/IDE HDD formatted to UDF v1.02, Win98 assigns a drive letter and can read data from the UDF HDD if the HDD was set to Removable. Without special software, Win98 can only read from the UDF-formatted HDD, but cannot write to it. The UDF-formatted HDD is displayed in My Computer as "Used Space: 74.5GB, Free Space: 0 bytes", without displaying a Low Disk Space Warning. Under WinXP SP2, however, the same UDF-formatted internal HDD continously displays an annoying Low Disk Space Warning. Under WinXP I had used TweakUI v2.10 [ -> Taskbar and Start menu -> de-select: Warn when low on disk space] to turn off the Low Disk Space Warning]. TweakUI 2.10 is preferrable to a registry patch because TweakUI 2.10 displays conveniently whether the warning is on or off. TweakUI v1.33, the last version for Win98, does not have a selection to turn the Low Disk Space Warning on or off.

2) Does the "disk full" message come up under Win98 if your SATA HDD is inserted in a USB docking station or in an external USB enclosure?

Under WinXP a UDF-formatted HDD (i.e. with Free Space: 0 bytes) generates a Low Disk Space Warning if connected internally, but not when connected via USB.

That is pretty risky

I agree. Maybe last call before data loss on the 700GB HDD. Edited July 8, 2012 by Multibooter

[jaclaz]

I thought that saying the drive was 700 gb, and had 22 gb free was sufficient information.

Please accept my apology if I didn't say that it was a SATA drive being controlled and used in native SATA mode, and that it was formatted as a single primary FAT32 partition with 732,395,680 kilobytes total disk space, 23,095,744 kilobytes free, 32kb cluster size, 22,887,365 total clusters on disk, 721,742 available clusters. Is there any other information that is necessary in order to arrive at an answer to my original question?

Or perhaps nobody here has encountered this phenomena before?

There is an issue, at least a "philosophical" one .

According to MS (but we all know how in some cases the info available is somewhat inaccurate, often at least partially misleading or - in a few occasions - plainly wrong ) the 22 Gb does not "sound right", see here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/191824/en-us

Disk Size   Threshold    Threshold
            Percentage   Space
----------------------------------------
<= 512 MB   10.0         25.6 - 51.2 MB
<=   1 GB    5.0         25.6 - 51.2 MB
<=   2 GB    2.5         25.6 - 51.2 MB
<=   4 GB    1.2         24.6 - 49.15 MB
<=   8 GB    0.6         24.6 - 49.15 MB
<=  16 GB    0.3         24.6 - 49.15 MB
<=  32 GB    0.2         32.8 - 65.5 MB
>   32 GB    0.1         32.8 - ???? MB

for a drive larger than 32 Gb the threashold is (even on drives for which the cleanup thingy has not been disabled through the Registry) 0.1%.

.

So in theory the thingy should be triggered around 750,000,000 bytes, i.e. around 715 Mb, much less than the 22 Gb!

Since the "threasholds table" has as last entry 32 Gb, it is possible that some miscalculation occurs, but it is "queer".

Personally, running Windows 98 with a single volume 700 Gb in size is what I would use as an example of "pure folly", for a number of other reasons, but maybe, as often is, it is just me .

jaclaz

[Nomen]

That is pretty risky. Installing Windows on a much smaller active partition with the bulk of your data on an extended partition ...

The 700 gb SATA drive in question is the second physical drive in the system (logical drive D). The first physical drive is an 80 gb IDE which is partitioned into 2 logical drives (C and E) - each being 32 gb (yes, there is some un-allocated space on that drive). The OS and all apps are located on C.

For the problem at hand, did you try reducing the percentage of space reserved for the recycle bin?

The system has Norton Systemworks 2002 installed on it, and that comes with Norton protected recycle bin. I've changed the settings several times, including complete deactivation of the recycle bin (or so it says) and this had no effect. I came across some mention on the web of this registry key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BitBucket

- "Percent"=dword:0000000n

- "UseGlobalSettings"=dword:00000001

- "NukeOnDelete"=dword:00000001

But they also had no effect.

By the way, this "Bitbucket" key has a long list of hex parameters for logical drives C through M, as well as "Purgeinfo". Does anyone know what those parameters are for?

[Nomen]

According to MS (but we all know how in some cases the info available is somewhat inaccurate, often at least partially misleading or - in a few occasions - plainly wrong ) the 22 Gb does not "sound right", see here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/191824/en-us

For a drive larger than 32 Gb the threshold is (even on drives for which the cleanup thingy has not been disabled through the Registry) 0.1%.

So in theory the thingy should be triggered around 750,000,000 bytes, i.e. around 715 Mb, much less than the 22 Gb!

Since the "threasholds table" has as last entry 32 Gb, it is possible that some miscalculation occurs, but it is "queer".

Well, here's something interesting.

When I bring up the properties for the Recycle bin, click on the tab for D drive, It displays this:

Size of drive: 1.99 GB

Space reserved: 61.4 mb

This is when I set the percent-reserved for the recycle bin to 3%.

Now why it's thinking that the drive is 2 gb in size is strange. It is underestimating the size of the drive by a factor of 350. If I take that 61.4 mb and multiply it by 350 I get about 21.5 gb - about the amount of free space on the drive.

My gut feeling is that even when the "Do not move files to the recycle bin" box is checked, something is still trying to reserve 3% of the drive space. That "something" is getting the math wrong and it thinks it needs to reserve 3% and not 0.1% as you indicate it should for a drive of this size.

[submix8c]

I'm not going to bother with searching for the Topics on MSFN (yes, they are here) with references/links to varoius MS (and other) articles on the Recycle Bin, suffice it to say that the "way it works" will NEVER change! It will ALWAYS say "1.99gb" and the "percent" will have absolutely NO EFFECT on such a large partition! The "limit" is STUCK there and can't be changed. Norton 2002 "protected recycle bin" (IMHO) stinks like a rotten egg. The best thing you could do for your setup (again, IMHO) is to

1 - Uninstall that part of Norton 2002

2 - Set Recycle Bins to "independent"

3 - Change that LARGE partition's bin to "Delete Immediately"

4 - BE CAREFUL when deleting files from it

Do a google this way -

"recycle bin" "windows 98" site:www.msfn.org

and this way -

"recycle bin" "windows 98" rloew site:www.msfn.org

...for some insight... (btw rloew is one of the main experts on Windows 98 patching, and I'm pretty sure that somewhere he stated that you were "stuck" with it...)

Edited July 8, 2012 by submix8c

[jaclaz]

If it helps , it is confirmed as a problem in Windows 98:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/187188/en-us

jaclaz