48 LBA and SATA drives in Windows 9X

[ROTS]

Okay so I am starting this topic due to a previouse issue I had, with a SATA drive I attempted to use as storage. The SATA is the Seagate 320.

So I tried to install it, into my windows 98. Apparently Windows 9x is unable to read any hard drives over

a certian amount of Gigs that uses a 48LBA cachce???? ( unless you want to correct me, please correct me ) Which means, you have to partitian the drive.

Meanwhile all 24LBA cache ( correct me on this term ) drives works normal.

I did that but I can't still test to see if this work because I am lacking the power supply cable for the

SATA drive I have.

I attempted to load the drive, but of course 9x tried to read threw the IDE to Sata I have but it will not

read. I could only assume, the VIA fasttrack that is connected to my drive, is what is getting in the way ( because that is detected by 98.

I have been reading, and is appears with many SATA devices a special BIOS is installed on board ( which also comes up via startuo ) and they all are very differnt, Win 9x needs special software to read SATA drives.

Again this is untested because I am lacking the Sata power source, ( it looks as if the SATA drive have a mini power outlet ( when the drive could have fit a big one but it has a mini one ) but I will to wait until I could get a new power outlet.

[jaclaz]

You must have a defect on your keyboard.

After you press the "." full stop or "period", you should also press the [ENTER] key, which will provide a Carriage Returne (or CR+LF) that will make your posts much more readable.

Hey, you actually asked to be corrected .

LBA is about "addressing", not about "cache".

Traditionally hard disks had an addressing scheme called CHS that hit a limit at around 8Gb in size (1024*255*63*512).

Then the LBA addressing scheme was widely adopted, but originally the LBA address had a size of 22 bits, in practice never used, and later of 28 bits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_block_addressing

This limited the max addressable size to around 128 Gb.

Then the addressing scheme was extended to use 48 bits instead.

To have a bigger than 128 Gb disk in Win9x/Me quite a number of things are needed/must be taken care of.

You will need to go through here:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/129027-big-hdd-48-bit-lba-thread-index/

Yes, all given links are related, but on second post dencorso put together a nice, simple "How to" that covers most cases.

For a SATA disk you might need additional "special" tools, like Rloew's SATA DDO/driver (or whatever).

You should post the specific make/model of the motherboard in order to get more "targeted" support.

jaclaz

Edited July 26, 2013 by jaclaz

[Nomen]

Any or all PCI sata cards will come with SATA/Raid drivers for win-9x/me. The card will most likely be based on SiL3112 and be a 2-port card. You install the SATA drivers for Win-98 and connect SATA drives and use them as native/Sata mode (not IDE or legacy mode). Any store selling computer parts will have these PCI-sata cards for sale, should cost under $20 USD or equivalent. Buy the 2-port SATA card - the 4-port cards might not work properly (no DMA).

You will not need any special or third-party software to get this to work.

I currently have a 750 gb and 1.5 tb drive connected to my win-98 system - they are each formatted as single partition. My 750 gb drive has run out of space many times, and I have transfered stuff over the the 1.5 tb drive to compensate. I have been downloading many 500 mb and 1gb files lately...

[TmEE]

My 98SE based server has a SIL3112 based SATA card that has pair of 1TB drives in RAID1.

My main computer uses a SIL3114, it has no performance problems and works wonderfully with my 3x 250GB and 1x 750GB drives.