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2Gb ceiling on NT4.0

By sidvail ·
I'm trying to create a BDC to backup our server. The machine I'm trying this on has a 120Gb hard drive. I managed to get it done, but the NT4.0 installation limited me to 2Gb for the C Drive.

Is there a way around this? My original server that I'm trying to protect has a 4Gb partition for C: I was gonna just image it to the new drive - but this would make it a copy of the PDC, and from what I can tell - there is no way to turn this into a BDC. It has to be done during installation.

Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks
Sid

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Partition Magic

by gralfus In reply to 2Gb ceiling on NT4.0

Once you install it using the 2Gig limit, try using Partition Magic or something similar to increase the C: drive size. It has been a while since I used NT4, but I think that is how we got around the limit.

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Tried it

by sidvail In reply to Partition Magic

Yeah, I thought of that also. But alas, it gave me the message: "Cannot re-partition the volume as it is already at it's maximum size."

I thought that was pretty wierd. I'm gonna try partitioning it first - then try to install. If nothing else, I have my original servers 9Gb hard drive which is a 4Gb partition - and do a new istall on it.

Hope it works.

Thanks for the reply :)

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1024 cyl limit!

by djent In reply to 2Gb ceiling on NT4.0

The boot partition should not exceed cyl 1024 (7.68 GB)or it will cause boot problems. The way to achieve this is to connect the drive as a secondary drive in an NT 4 machine with SP5 or better. partition C: as 7.68 GB or less and format as NTFS with 4096 byte sector size. You can then install NT4, retain current file system. Install SP6a and finish config, partition and format as NTFS the balance of drive.

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Sweet

by sidvail In reply to 1024 cyl limit!

Thanks djent. I'm saving this as one of those 'cool tips' to refer to later. I may have to resort to it if my present fix doesn't work out.

I finally got mine working like this. I formatted the 120Gb drive fat32 with single partition. Then started the NT installation. When it came to selecting partition to install to - I deleted the partition, re-partitioned FAT with 4Gb size. 6Gb wouldn't take, but 4 did. It offered a warning that it was larger than it should be - but gave me the opportunity to continue. So far it has worked fine.

All other tries at getting NT to recognize the drive failed. And previous to this, 2Gb was all I could get out of it. So far no problems, but I'm still installing programs, POS, etc. I will run it as a BDC for awhile and do some stress tests to see how it holds up. Hopefully, it will work.

Thanks all for your help.
Sid

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by djent In reply to Sweet

I keep an old drive around with NT4 installed for setup and trouble shooting purposes. NTFS prior to SP5 will not make boot partitions over 4GB. NTFS 5 was introduced with SP5. The cache 22 is that if you do an install from the NT CD you get SP1 and the 4GB limit. The work around is to do the partition from another install with SP5 or6. You can find extensive info on drive setup and file systems at "executive.com", they make Diskeeper.

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