Windows 98SE and Max Hard Disk size

[risk_reversal]

Quick question please. I have Win98SE still and wanted to buy a bigger HDD than my current 60Gb. If I drop a new 120Gb HDD will Win98SE recognise/see it (all of it). I remember reading something about this a while back and I think that it will be ok but I wonder if anyone has/is running a similar sized disk and were there any problems.

I have a fairly new mobo MSI KT3 Ultra 2R with latest bios 5.7 so I think from a bios point of view this will not be problematic

Many thanks for any help that you can provide

[GaryRouth]

The 120gb should work fine in Win98se. What you may have read about is that drives bigger than 60gb need to be formatted with a newer version of fdisk than the one on the CD. If you format it to FAT32 with either a WinME disk from bootdisk.com or the disk tools from the hard disk manufacturer (should come with the drive when you buy it, or you can download them at no cost), things should go fine.
. . . Gary

[. . . and here in L.A. the WD 120gb Ultra-100 w. 8mb cache are going for as little as $50 (USD) via rebates . . . and a I picked up a 120gb Maxtor for $60 a few weeks ago - no rebate on that one - hope the prices are good in London, too!]

[Force Flow]

Anything larger than 137GB is where you run into problems. That's 98SE's limit. It won't see a partition larger than that.

[galaxian]

Even thought the 120 will be seen ok, I would heartily recommend that you seriously consider partitioning it.
This will allow for more expedient backups, maintenance and if necessary, resinstalls.

[risk_reversal]

GaryRouth, many thanks for your comment regarding fdisk. Usually, I use Partition Magic to format and partition my HDDs. As regards HDD prices in London, well the Seagate 120 Gb 8Mb cache is about £56 ie about $100 exc shipping on ebuyer, so we are not so lucky as you guys. The WD that you mention is £44 ie $80 exc shipping.

Force Flow, I knew there was a limit somewhere associated with FAT32 (137Gb), I just could not remember what it was. Cheers.

galaxian, I was merely trying to make my post as short as possible but I fully agree with what you say and I always partition my HDD (In fact I run 2 HDD on most of my systems) and as you say it's the only way to go.

Again many thanks for the input guys I feel much happier about ordering my new HDD now.

[lostplanet]

going off thread a little, i upgraded recently and was told that win 98 starts to become unstable with more than 512mb ram, just FYI.
Also i had to get a new BIOS DL from gateway as well to recognise over a 60+ gb HDD but my MoBo is poorly supported.
HTH as well

JP

[Mesaeus]

Something to add : with such large partitions, scandisk and defrag (included in Windows) will probably give out of memory errors, because the number of clusters gets too big. You can always use scandisk in DOS and get yourself a commercial defragger. Just something which troubled me recently with a 80 Gig partition under W98SE.

[risk_reversal]

lostplanet, I will just have to hope that my mobo bios can detect the 120Gb HDD. I have an MSI KT3 Ultra2 R mobo with the KT333 chipset and the latest (last) bios v5.7. Fingers crossed.
As you also say Win98SE works well with 512Mb ram which I have but can become unstable with 1Gb. I did try in vain a couple of months ago to make it work with 1Gb. Windows booted ok and so long as I did not run 3Dmark or play games the o/s handled the memory well. I tried everything could not get it stable, so I reverted to 512Mb.

Mesaeus, noted as regards using the windows utilities. I must admit for the last few years I have only used the Norton equivalents as they are much faster.

I have ordered a Seagate 120Gb 8Mb disk and it will be arriving shortly, then I will have to mess about with Partition magic to transfer my partitions from the old disk. That is going to be fun...not....

Many thanks again lostplanet & Mesaeus for your additional comments.

I know that perhaps the easiest path would be eventually to move away from Win98SE but from what I have seem from friends of mine with XP, I am not that keen. Perhaps Win2000 is my upgrade path in the fullness of time.

[glc]

Do not use Partition Magic to partition and format the drive - or you WILL get the out of memory errors when you try to scandisk and defrag. Use good old FDISK.

There's an easy way to get 98 stable with a gig of ram - run sysedit, and edit the system.ini file - look for the [vcache] section and add the following entry in it:

MaxFileCache=512000

[lostplanet]

Is GLC worth his weight in gold or what?

[Markoman01027]

Can you format the partition within the 98SE setup? I know you can do that with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

[glc]

Originally Posted by Markoman01027 Can you format the partition within the 98SE setup? I know you can do that with Windows 2000 and Windows XP.

Nope. Gotta use FDISK.

[risk_reversal]

Many thanks for your comments glc. As regard Win98SE running 1gb of ram. I did edit the system.ini file adding MaxFileCache=512000 under vcache heading. In fact, I tried using every possible combination of Max and subsequently I added a MinFileCache value as well trying every possible combination of Min & Max. The end result was still the same that windows booted ok and was fine but if I tried to run 3DMark it would either lock up at some stage or send me back to the desktop and from then on the o/s would start becoming corrupt.
I even edited the system.ini file adding a MaxPhysPage value as well trying to limit the physical amount of memory that the o/s would detect. I tried quite a few values between 968 & 990 Mb. Win98SE still did not wanna play ball.

One quick question for clarification though. You say >> Do not use Partition Magic to partition and format the drive - or you WILL get the out of memory errors when you try to scandisk and defrag. Use good old FDISK <<

Does this equally apply if I am going to use the Symantec utilities to scandisk (Norton Disk Doctor) & defrag (SpeedDisk) instead of the windows utilities.

[glc]

I don't know. Check out this article for an explanation for why this happens.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=229154

[risk_reversal]

Cheers glc. I am not sure that I remember how to partition and format with the windows utility . I will have to look it up in my files.
I recall reading when I bought the original hdds for my rig that there was a scandisk problem above 64gb (i think). Hence I bought the 60Gb.

In case it help anyone, partitioning and formating with Partition Magic has never led to any problems when I ran Norton disk doctor or Speed disk with my 60Gb hdds.

Again many thanks for your kind help & advice.

[glc]

With drives over 64gb, FDISK has a bug that will show the wrong capacity. However, an easy workaround is to define your partitions by percentage of the drive instead of absolute capacity. You can also download the patched Fdisk and replace the one on your bootdisk with it.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=263044