[Force Flow]

First, FAT16 file systems can only see partitions that are less than 2GB, and Windows 98 has a limiting partition size of 137GB. Anything larger, and it just doesn’t exist as far as the host machine is concerned. There are really no workarounds for these two limitations. The issue with older machines is that no matter what file system is being used, the motherboard’s BIOS may not support large capacity partitions. Yes, this hardware limitation carries over to Unix/Linux platforms, not being a software issue. There are partition limits with older BIOS chips: 137GB, 32GB, 8GB, 2GB, and 504MB, depending on the age and the type of BIOS. This leaves you a few ways to get around this limiting factor. One workaround is to install a PCI IDE card (with SATA capabilities, if needed). The other is to simply use a newer machine. A riskier third option would be to see if a newer BIOS revision was released that fixes the limitation, and to perform a BIOS flash with this update. If done incorrectly, the BIOS flash can effectively render your motherboard useless. There is one exception to the partition limitation you should be aware of among modern systems: note that if you are running Windows XP without SP1 (Service Pack 1), there is a software limitation of seeing partitions larger than 137GB. Installing SP1 fixes this issue. Windows 2000 has a similar issue with the 137GB limitation, but if you have either SP3 or SP4, the problem will be resolved. Anything lower than SP3, and you’re stuck with the 137GB limit.

~From the Data Recovery article