Enable48BitLBA | Break the 137Gb barrier!

[Petr]

BTW, this is very nice tool: http://www.hdat2.com/

and also the User's Manual contains detail information about many things related to disks.

It also contains the statement:

Any Windows 95 version does not support disk greater than 32 GB (see KB246818)

Petr

[qazaq]

1. installed the patch

2. installed fdisk from free dos

3. installed maxtor 300gb drive

4. put more than 200gb on it

5. found the link posted by maximus-decim and installed scandisk and defrag from ME

6. ran scandisk and all was fine

7. ran defrag and all went well

everything works so far

thank you to everyone who had anything to do with this project

[LLXX]

1. installed the patch

2. installed fdisk from free dos

3. installed maxtor 300gb drive

4. put more than 200gb on it

5. found the link posted by maximus-decim and installed scandisk and defrag from ME

6. ran scandisk and all was fine

7. ran defrag and all went well

everything works so far

thank you to everyone who had anything to do with this project

Did you copy the files from DOS or Windows? All the copy operations must be done through the driver (disk access must not be in 16-bit "MS-DOS Compatibility Mode"). I have posted a recommended procedure a few posts previous.

[qazaq]

1. installed the patch

2. installed fdisk from free dos

3. installed maxtor 300gb drive

4. put more than 200gb on it

5. found the link posted by maximus-decim and installed scandisk and defrag from ME

6. ran scandisk and all was fine

7. ran defrag and all went well

everything works so far

thank you to everyone who had anything to do with this project

Did you copy the files from DOS or Windows? All the copy operations must be done through the driver (disk access must not be in 16-bit "MS-DOS Compatibility Mode"). I have posted a recommended procedure a few posts previous.

yes i did the file copy in dos

i used the win98 cd to boot to a c: prompt

[Petr]

1. installed the patch

2. installed fdisk from free dos

3. installed maxtor 300gb drive

4. put more than 200gb on it

5. found the link posted by maximus-decim and installed scandisk and defrag from ME

6. ran scandisk and all was fine

7. ran defrag and all went well

everything works so far

thank you to everyone who had anything to do with this project

Did you have one big partition or more smaller?

Windows scandisk and defrag do not work with disks bigger than 137 GB.

Petr

[LLXX]

yes i did the file copy in dos

i used the win98 cd to boot to a c: prompt

Wrong procedure. DOS 7.1 uses Int13x which supports 48-bit LBA. It has nothing to do with ESDI_506.PDR.

[krick]

Windows scandisk and defrag do not work with disks bigger than 137 GB.

Petr

Just checking...

Both Windows 98SE *and* Windows ME versions of scandisk and defrag have this limitation?

[Petr]

Windows scandisk and defrag do not work with disks bigger than 137 GB.

Petr

Just checking...

Both Windows 98SE *and* Windows ME versions of scandisk and defrag have this limitation?

Yes, if I remember correctly, both are 16-bit application that are able to allocate 64KB max. for clusters table.

Something is written here:

"Your Computer Does Not Have Enough Free Memory to Defrag the Drive" Error Message

Petr

[erpdude8]

What about esdi_506.pdr included with Windows 95?

If patching is not very difficult it would be great to create also a Windows 95 patch. There might be some hobbyists still using Windows 95. Does Windows 95 support FAT32 anyway?

NO DONT MAKE PATCHES FOR WIN95! WIN95's ESDI_506.PDR FILES DO NOT SUPPORT HDDs BIGGER THAN 32 GIGS!

Everyone should be AWARE and have read MS article 246818 that Win95 can NOT support hard drives bigger than 32 gig (and they may NOT even work under Win95):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/246818/EN-US/

Bottom line, 32GB+ HDs are incompatible with Win95 and require Win98/ME or better to use.

Those "hobbyists" hp38guser mentioned are most likely very, VERY few and more & more PC users are using at least Win98 or Win2000.

If you could give me a link to 4.10.1119 then I'll try to fix it...

the one I have from my Win95b distro is 4.10.1111

The driver structure changed greatly between 95 and 98 (and again with ME), so this is going to take moar time to implement... but I will do it

Any test results yet?

Q176529 esdi_506.pdr v4.00.1119 hotfix for Win95 SR2 is NO longer available from Microsoft support as I was told they are no longer offering any existing Win95 hotfixes because ALL support for Win95 had ended. You wont be able to find it anywhere online.

and besides, Win95 OSes are SO last decade and so last century that adding 48bit LBA support under Win95 would also require a complete rewriting or rebuilding of Win95 (yes, even rewriting many of Win95's core system files which have a lot of missing "dependencies" that are included in Win98/Win2000 & higher) which is next to impossible. heck, even Win95's built-in INF files cant even recognize Pentium 2 or even Pentium 3 CPUs and cant work on CPUs faster than 2.1 Ghz as mentioned in MS article 312108:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312108

so LLXX, you need to concentrate on making Win98/ME OSes 48bit LBA compliant and forget about Win95.

Win95 OSes are pretty much dead and already in the afterlife.

Edited July 24, 2006 by erpdude8

[LLXX]

I've found the 4.10.1119, but now you say it's pointless to patch

Where does the 32Gb limit come from? That's 64M sectors i.e. 2^26 which doesn't look like a familiar limit.

Edited July 24, 2006 by LLXX

[qazaq]

yes i did the file copy in dos

i used the win98 cd to boot to a c: prompt

Wrong procedure. DOS 7.1 uses Int13x which supports 48-bit LBA. It has nothing to do with ESDI_506.PDR.

ok in extreme detail here is what i did

1. download 4102225F.ZIP and unzip

2. copy esdi_506.pdr to root dir of c:

3. reboot using win98 cd to plain old dos

4. dos commands as follows

cd windows

cd system

cd iosubsys

rename esdi_506.pdr esdi_506.bak

5. copy c:\esdi_506.pdr

6. shutdown

7. install 300gb drive as drive d:

8. boot to dos and fdisk drive

9. boot into windows and format drive d:

10 copy lots and lots of files to d:

11 run scandisk and it does not work

12 run defrag and it does not work

13 downloaded this

http://rapidshare.de/files/26697545/bhdd20e.zip.html

posted by maximus-decim

Include:

esdi_506.pdr - LLXX version 4.10.2225 (up to version 4.10.2230)

defrag.exe - Windows Me

dskmaint.dll - Windows Me

scandskw.exe - Windows Me

format.exe - Free Format 0.91v

fdisk.exe - Free Fdisk 1.21

Documentations and Installation

14 installed above per documentation

15 ran scandisk and it worked

16 ran defrag and it works also

thats it all done

Edited July 24, 2006 by qazaq

[LLXX]

From your procedure above it seems like it is indeed working.

Looks like defrag from WinME does work with partitions bigger than 128Gb...

One more confirmation: I'd like a screenshot of the Properties page of the 300Gb drive being filled past 137Gb, ajacent to the information dialog from a successful scandisk'ing.

[n7Epsilon]

The 32 GB limit is due to Windows 95 non-support of FAT32 (only FAT16) and the maximum size for a FAT drive is 32 GB (using some 3rd party utilities can get a 64 GB FAT32 drive) but at that size the cluster size is 32 KB and 64 KB respectively which is ridiculously huge and causes a lot of wasted space.

[Petr]

From your procedure above it seems like it is indeed working.

Looks like defrag from WinME does work with partitions bigger than 128Gb...

One more confirmation: I'd like a screenshot of the Properties page of the 300Gb drive being filled past 137Gb, ajacent to the information dialog from a successful scandisk'ing.

Is this sufficient?

Surprisingly, Windows Me scandisk and defrag really works while the original Windows 98 versions not.

Petr

[qazaq]

From your procedure above it seems like it is indeed working.

Looks like defrag from WinME does work with partitions bigger than 128Gb...

One more confirmation: I'd like a screenshot of the Properties page of the 300Gb drive being filled past 137Gb, ajacent to the information dialog from a successful scandisk'ing.