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60 Gig Hard Drive

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by dlbfiero 1 view

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People told me that Win98SE will not support a 60G Hard Drive and it will keep locking up on you, is this true? I have not known of this. any comments?

13 replies

by opatzg9

I was under the opinoin that 32 gig partitions were the limit for win 98 and FAT32. Anything above that could cause you problems. I've been using an 80 gig drive for a year now with no problems but it is formatted in 4 partitions of 30/30/16/3.

by opatzg9

It appears 30 gig is the limit, MS does have a patch i found out at this site for fat32
http://www.dewassoc.com/support/index.html
Partition Magic does get you around the problem as well. Note if your still using win 98 the support at Microsoft is being dropped this year so et your patches now!

by opatzg9

My apologies to Anna if she thinks I was questioning her at all. I know false documentation can be out there as well and that patches exist to get you around most all bugs. Anna your far more a legend here than I would ever and I very much respectyour answers, I was just trying to point out what I thought was the issue. Also if this person is just using the win98 cd's to perform this 60 gig load he may need some of those patches before he starts. Good luck. And my apologise to you Anna if you feel I was attacking your answer, that was not my point.
I was just showing where I got my inferences from and both sites if you look under FAT32 information show a limitation real or imaginary fixed by new fdisks and new bios. I guess then itdepends on whether this questioner has the new fdisk and a newer motherboard. It's also nice to know you can go higher with FAT32, thanks.

by ann777

A 60 GB hdd will work fine on a Win98SE system. The OS itself is not the determining factor. The factor that matters is the hdd controller.

If you do not know the specifications of your systemboard and the ATA controller embedded on your systemboard, then purchase a ATA/133 PCI card, attach the drive to it, and you will be able to use a hdd up to 137 GB (one partition) with Win98SE without any problems.

See page 25 (which is really page 27 in the pdf document):
http://www.maxtor.com/en/documentation/instal
lation_guides/ata_installation_guide.pdf

I am using a 120 GB Maxtor drive on my Win98SE machine (it has a legacy parallel port HP flatbed scanner) and have had no problems with anything. Note the documentation states that there may be some problems with defrag/scandisk with hdds above 137 GB and this OS.

BUT, with a 60 GB drive, you should not be having these problems unless the system (hardware) does not support this.

by ann777

Sorry opatzg.... I've been using one partition 60 GB and 80 GB drives, long before purchasing this last systemboard and drive. I've not run into drive limitations on Win98SE on any PIII or PIV, or the recent AMD systemboards.

I looked at the above link, but cannot find the specific info you mention as being there?

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

"The 65,536 Cylinder (31.5 GiB / 33.8 GB) Barrier

This barrier is relatively recent, and along with a couple of others began showing up during the spring and summer of 1999. Although this barrier is often referred to as the 32 GB barrier similar to the one immediately above, that description is a bit of a misnomer.

This particular barrier is caused by some versions of the Award BIOS not being able to handle drives having more than 65,535 cylinders. Most hard disk parameters use 16 heads and 63 sectors, which works out to a capacity of approximately 33.8 GB or 31.5 GiB. It is our understanding that on or about June of 1999, this problem had been corrected by Award. This is somewhat of an unusual barrier given that most, if not all, hard disks above 8 GB no longer use discrete geometry for access, instead Logical Block Addressing is used along with a flat sector number from 0 to one less than the number of sectors on the drive. No doubt this 65,536 cylinder problem must somehow be related to some older code that was being used, or a compatibility issue with older hard drives (or both). From everything we have been able to examine, this issue was limited to a few machines that relied upon old Award BIOS code that was subsequently corrected with an update."

by ann777

Unless you are talking about the aparagraphy below that one... which refers to a 64 GB barrior:

The Windows 98/98SE 64GB Barrier

This barrier is often mischaracterized as a Windows? 95/98/SE barrier, when in fact it is not a limitation of the operating system at all. Rather, the barrier (a limitation actually) is caused by the use of an old version of Microsoft's disk setup tools, Fdisk.exe and Format.com.

When you use Fdisk.exe to partition a hard disk that is larger than 64 GB (64 gigabytes, or 68,719,476,736 bytes) in size, Fdisk does not report the correct size of the hard disk. The size that Fdisk reports is the full size of the hard disk minus 64 GB. For example, if the physical drive is 70.3 GB (75,484,122,112 bytes) in size, Fdisk reports the drive as being 6.3 GB (6,764,579,840 bytes) in size.

The reason for this is that Fdisk uses some 16-bit values internally to calculate the size of the drive. Some of these variables overflow when the drive size is equal to or larger than 64 GB. Microsoft has made a fix available for this problem, which is an updated version of Fdisk.exe.

The new file information is as follows:

File Date Time Stamp File Size File Name Windows Version
05/19/00 10:30AM 64,428 Fdisk.exe Windows 98
05/18/00 08:35AM 64,460 Fdisk.exe Windows 98 SE

You can read more about this issue in the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article titled: Q263044 - Fdisk Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64 GB.

---

I think my boot disks already have the updated fdisk.exe and maybe that's why I've not had a problem?

I can confirms that the drives I use with Win98SE do not have any hanging or booting problems under this OS. And if the original poster formatted his drive and it is all being recognized, then the problem is not Windows nor the version of Fdisk.exe

by thechas

There is a W98 large hard drive 'bug' for a specific hardware configuration.

Check out this Microsoft Knowledge Base article.

http://tinyurl.com/aryt

I follow the same method as OpatzG.
I break up my large drives into multiple logical drives.
For 1 thing, several small drives usually have more functional file space than 1 large drive under FAT.
For a large drive, all files are broken into 32KB clusters. So, a 1KB file actually takes up 32KB of disk space.
With smaller logical drives, each cluster can be smaller, resulting in less wasted disk space.

Check out the partition strategy article posted at www.aumha.org

Chas

by smlo101

I have been using an 80 gig HD with 98se with no problems for at least a year. 98 can address upto 2 tera bytes of data. You can always partition your drive into smaller partitions to make it more managable.

by wlbowers

If your computer will support the drive here are the limitations.

Fat32 file systems impose a restriction on the number of clusters on a volume.

Format will immediately stop processing if it decides that the requirements cannot be met.

I have formatted fat32 up to 80 gigs with out problems.

This information can be found by running a command window and typing
help format

The numbers that show on the cluster count will be different depending on what os you are using.

Sometimes you will have to create a partition and format it before installing the os.

Hope this helps

Good Luck Lee

by tofccn2003

THE 60 GIGABYTE HARD DRIVE SHOULD GO WELL! But, it
is first essential to refer to the manufacturer's!
site for information on the system board itself! A
look into the latest version of FDISK.exe found at
MICORSOFT indicates that this version breaks a 65g
barrier, allowing up to 137gb. YET! There is truth
in also reseaching the information at a hard drive
manufacturer's site itself! IF, for instance, you?
may want a large capacity Western Digital drive in
your home pc. But, the bios may not detect a drive
over a certain size. WHAT DO YOU DO? With a WD 120
having a "SINGLE PARTITION" is NO PROBLEM! WHY? It
has to do with their LIFEGUARD utilities. One of a
number found there is DLGEZ.EXE! This utility will
bypass the aforementioned bios limitations, enable
and utilize that drive's full capacity! The source
here has a 120gb WD drive with only ONE partition!
running WIN98SE! The predecessot to DLGEZ was that
utility known EZDRIVE.EXE! At that point, H.Drives
were not available with over 30gb of capacity. The
manufacturers of other brands also have their own!
utilities for this same purpose. First, you figure
out how much space you want on the system. Then, a
QUICK TRIP to the manufacturer's site of the brand
you intend on installing will have downloads there
for formatting and partitioning the drive(s). That
LIFEGUARD set of utilities ALSO has differnt types
of applications such as it's own DRDOS files which
replace MSDos files found on a WIN98SE start disk.
GEE? Now that I have a 120 that works, I should ??
well maybe try out the 250gb drive available?! The
solutions are out there. But, a little research is
the basic formula for getting at CORRECT ANSWERS!!

by tofccn2003

ADDING FURTHER! "IF?" YOU DO DECIDE to install any
large capacity drive, especially one over 80gig in
size, BE ADVISED that most require that the board!
supports Ultra ATA100! In the case of large drives
that exceed 80 gigabytes, you WILL NEED to use the
newer 40pin/80wire ide ribbon cable! They are more
commonly marketed as 40pin/80conductor flat cables
with some sources now offering round ones. There's
one other thing to mention here about Western Dig.
drives being "backward compatable" to a lesser ATA
like ATA33 and ATA66! So, you may not have to take
out the current motherboard for an upgrade. Yet, a
cable with the additional 40 wires is essential on
the newer large capacity drives! There is one good
advantage to attaining an 40pin/80conductor over a
40pin/40wire in that it strongly reduces "chatter"
between data streams! Compare this to the old "cb"
radio where bleed over from one channel to another
was very common. "SPLASH" was the well known term!
The additional 40 wires are themselves 40 "GROUND"
wires added to the cable to prevent any "SPLASH"!!

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