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W95 2GB limits in 95B

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7 replies

by casemaker

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I have installed a slave drive, 20GB capacity. Do I have to partition it with all 2GB or can I format it fat 32 and use larger. I have not looked at the master to see if it is fat 16 or 32.
Thanks

7 replies

by dmiles

First check the Bios version shown on startup screen,then go to bios manufacturer web site and check for flash update to upgrade bios,to see if this will support large hard drive
Once this is done I would consider using two 10gig partitions,using FAT 32 file system would give you more disk space.
Windows 95B will support FAT 32.

by maxwell edison

You should be concerned about your existing disk and configuration when adding a new hard disk, but the size of your existing disk is not one of the factors that make a difference.

The first question is whether or not your computer's BIOS provides support for Large Block Addressing (LBA), which makes it possible to use disks larger than 540MB. If your system is using a software driver to get access to the full gigabyte of your existing disk, you may want to consider upgrading your system BIOS or adding a new controller with LBA support as part of your upgrade plans. You should find a choice in your computer's CMOS configuration settings that indicate whether or not LBA support is provided; if you're not certain, contact the manufactureror consult the system documentation.

Next, you may want to make the new disk the master and use your existing, older disk as the master on your system's secondary IDE channel, if one is available. This is because your new disk is likely to have more sophisticated controller electronics, and you may get better performance by making it the master instead of having it rely on the older disk's controller. Also, most IDE controllers use the same timing signals for both devices on a channel, so your older disk may limit the performance of your newer disk. If your system does not have a secondary IDE channel, consider adding one or getting a new controller that can provide different timing signals to two disks on the same channel.

I have quite a few Windows 95 machines with hard drives of 20 GB and larger. So Windows 95 will not be what imposes any potential limitation.

Maxwell

by mphoffar

You shouldn't have a problem with mixing a fat16 and fat32

If this is the B (or OSR2) version like your say, just make a boot disk (either through the control panel or command prompt) and when you run fdisk, you should be prompted for to enable support for large drives.

Mark

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