Question about 48-bit LBA hard drive functionality

[xtrm]

Well I have norton AV 2002 professional, so that recycle bin stuff is on my comp anyway. I deactivated it tho. But as long as I can use normal scandisk without the big scan (which takes like 8 hours on my 120 gig), it's ok. But not being able to use defrag sucks a bit.

[Mijzelf]

Neither of these will see the sectors past that big hard drive limit

It's just that the versions that come with Windows 9x/Me don't have that 48bit LBA compatibility.

Those statements are not true. The problems with scandisk and defrag are on partition level, not on hardware level, and have nothing to do with LBA48. Both are crippled by a maximum memory usage, which limits them to a partition of max about 127 GiB. support.microsoft.com. While this looks as the same limit as the LBA28 limit, it has a different cause. You are safe as long as your partitions are smaller than 127GiB.

BTW: defrag and scandiskw from WinME don't have this problem, and you can exchange your W95/98 version with these ones. 2nd advantage: defrag from WinME is much faster.

[xtrm]

a) I had planned to buy a 250 gig drive and make two 125 GB partitions anyway

b ) I have the ME version of defrag anyway

c) I can exchange my scandiskw.exe from 98se to the ME one and it 1.) works and 2.) is better?

d) I would not have any problems with my scandiskw anyway, not even with the big scan, because all of my partitions would be less than 127 gig?

Am I right with C and D? If yes...why the hell did nobody tell me this? lol

Edited May 10, 2007 by xtrm

[Mijzelf]

C1 and D are both right. C2, well, I don't know if it's better. It just works.

[jaclaz]

"better" is a very difficult definition, sure it is faster! :

don't take my word for it, read Mdgx's take on the topic:

http://www.mdgx.com/98-5.htm#WDIW

The only possible (unconfirmed) exception could be if you use a German system AND MS money 99:

http://www.msfn.org/board/Note_WinME_Defra...y99_t92956.html

I guess that this, even IF definitely confirmed, can be solved or however affects 0.01% of users....

also, check #16 here:

http://smallvoid.com/tweak/win9x/tweak.html

and "MAP THE CACHE" here:

http://www.mdgx.com/98-3.htm

and, ONLY if you like taking risks AND have less than 64 Mb memory, this:

http://www.mdgx.com/98-1.htm#98FAS

jaclaz

Edited May 11, 2007 by jaclaz

[Eck]

Well okay, then. I had no idea that Windows Me's ScanDisk and Defrag could handle past 137GB. I had understood that the Windows Me versions were just an improved design that ran faster, but didn't know they were also able to handle past 137GB. Since I always use 98SE2ME I get those versions anyway.

[Xeno86]

Has anybody tried if Diskeeper Lite 7.0.418 (freeware) works past 137GB ?

I am currently using it on my Windows 98 and I must say that's a lot faster than MS defrag.exe.

[eidenk]

I did it once but I lost data after I crashed the OS (by my stupid fault, nothing to do with diskeeper) while defragmenting a 250GB partition with something like 200 GB of data on it..

After I had recovered most of my lost data, which was apparently only what was being moved around by Diskeeper at the time the OS crashed, I decided to partition my 250GB disks into 2 x 120GB partitions, which I find more manageable, so I never tried again.

Hence I can't be 100% sure it works properly. I would think so only.

[Brainpiercing]

Do the >137MB problems only apply to IDE or to SATA as well?

[Mijzelf]

Do the >137MB problems only apply to IDE or to SATA as well?

I'm not sure, but I suppose that you will have the same problem when you use the compatibility mode, in which case the drive behaves as a normal IDE drive, and so the ESDI_506 driver will be used. As soon as you use special SATA (chipset) drivers the problem should be gone.

[Brainpiercing]

Hmm, good. Because I HAVE been using a 200GB SATA drive for about two years now, without problems, although not as a boot drive. Recently however a crash corrupted the registry to the point it had to be overwritten by an OLD copy. And there were no SATA drivers in that copy, so I was quite scared. Luckily, I wrote nothing to the disk until the SATA-drivers were installed again. (By way of explanation: Even though I consider myself somewhat an enthusiast, this installation of Win98SE I am running is the same one I did for my old setup of hardware about five or six years ago, and it hasn't been reinstalled even after exchanging basically every component except the harddisk about three years ago. Win98 is so tolerant of hardware changes....)