Drive partition sizes in win2k and win 98?

[Pongo]

Stupid question time.

I just got my hands on an older Pentium 3 that I was thinking about using for my cabinet CPU, but it's missing a hard drive. I just took a look at my local best buy, and the smallest drive they carry is 100Gig!

I obviously won't need anywhere near that, but the real question I have is partition size. Can Win2K or Windows 98 use a partition this big? It's been so long since I've used either of these my memory is a bit weak. I obviously don't want to have 50 2 gig drives.

If I use Win2K, I should be able to make one large NTFS partition right? Was fat32 supported at all? What about Win98?

Thanks for any help.

[Space Fractal]

This normally is depend which IDE controllers used and can have a limit, regaardles you use Windows 98 or XP.

If you have trouble to see more than around 32GB on your system, you either need to get a new PCI IDE controller or use a external USB harddrive (here USB2 is a must) as a secondary drive....

[NOP]

FAT32 supports partitions up to 8TB. (there are other factors involved with going up that high, but no worries with a 100g drive)

FAT16 tops out at a measly 2Gig, so you *must* use FAT32 or NTFS to get the whole drive to show up as a single partition. 

NTFS has all kinds of different partition options, none of them are limited to 100G, so you'd be set there too.

Window98SE and 2k both support FAT32.  FAT32 has a 2gig file size limit, NTFS does not.

---

The IDE controller is actually not the culprit-it's 100% software which would keep you from seeing a drive that big, and all software can be updated, even if it entails using a disk manager installed on the partition table.

A P3 based machine should have native support for at least 137Gig drives.  Higher than that would require 48Bit LBA, which even if the BIOS didn't support, windows does (with some minor tweaking)

-jeff!

[EwJ]

A mobo with a p3 shouldn't have any probs with a 100GB drive.
w98 or 2k shouldn't have any probs either - fat32 or ntfs.
You shouldn't have any problems.
You may want to consider 2 partitions(if only using 1 hard drive) - 1 for OS, programs, etc, the other to backup your emu's, roms, progs, etc, in case you need/want to wipe the partition with the OS and reinstall or install a different OS.

Not to contradict what NOP has posted, but there may be exceptions to the 100% software rule -   I have an older Asus mobo with an Acer labs chipset that is limited to a max of 120GB  - apparently it is a limitation of the chipset, and no BIOS update, no Windows update, no update of any kind (that i and many other owners of this particular board can find) will allow it to utilize any more than 120GB.  This is an unusual case.

edit:add: emphasize not contradicting NOPS's post and may be exceptions - It may be the hardware or quite possibly the designer/developer's inability to make drivers that will make the hardware function as it should or could - either way - it comes down to this-if you happen to have this hardware, you will be unable to utilize anything over the 137gb (or 128gb as stated in the manufacturers notes for one of their attempts at a functioning driver).
The easy way around this of course would be to get a PCI IDE card - have one in an old Abit mobo(old udma33) - works great (Promise pci ide card)!

[Space Fractal]

I did have problems with a p700 for a year or two year ago with a limit of around 32-36gb, since the IDE controller would not see more. So it depend which controller used in the Motherboard.

On that machine I added that as a USB harddrive, since the machine did have a USB2 PCI controller. Works very well.

And the easist way it just to get a PCI IDE Card, if you hit some limit, or something like above around USB2 harddrive.

[NOP]

I did have problems with a p700 for a year or two year ago with a limit of around 32-36gb, since the IDE controller would not see more. So it depend which controller used in the Motherboard.

Sorry if I'm coming off as a non believer of that issue.  While I can easily see that an O/S would have limits like that, the hardware should have absolutely no limits seeing drives bigger than that (especially anything pentium class)

Except for EwJ's weird/cheap Acer board that had inexcusable hardware problems, it's usually the BIOS that has the drive limitations.

Here's some history:
Really early BIOSes can only "see" 528MB drives.  Later BIOSes got up to 137Gig, when they started using LBA addressing.  Around 2003ish, 48BIT LBA was introduced, and that's what we're using now, and we can now address up to 8TB.

All of the above limits are BIOS based.  Whatever O/S you install onto your machine may have it's own quirks with address limits and partition sizes.  Even though your hardware is capable of seeing 8TB doesn't mean that every O/S can do anything with it.

The neat thing is that even if you have an ancient, 528MB BIOS limit on your machine (like on my 286) all you need to do is to be able to load and execute the 1st couple sectors on your hard drive (which any old BIOS can do) and you can then load a BIOS patch, like Seagate Disk Manager, which will then allow your BIOS to address larger hard drives.  I currently have a 10Gig hard drive in my 286, and provided Disk Manager is properly doing it's job of replacing my BIOS, I should have no problems going up to a 137Gig at a minimum, all with my ancient, mid eighties era, ISA based IDE controller.

Modern operating systems don't use the BIOS to do HDD reads/writes anymore.  Starting with NT onward (maybe 98SE?) they do their own version of Disk Manager, and install their own drivers for reading the drive.  Again the trick is that the BIOS has to be able to at least read enough of the hard drive to get the OS drivers installed, and then the OS itself handles the addressing out to the higher ends of the drive from there.


I don't want to claim to know how things happened in your life, and I most certainly don't want to start an argument.  I do know from my experiences (I programmed BIOSes on pentium class motherboards for close to a decade and the group I was with made their own chipsets, including IDE controllers) that I have never seen anything as weird as that, and a piece of hardware that kind of limitation should have never made it out into production.  Likewise for EwJ's hardware.  Perhaps this type of thing is more prevalent than I thought from my sheltered life, but is inexcusable from a vendor's perspective to dump stuff like that onto the market.

-jeff!

[Pongo]

Thanks for the responses.

I doubt I'll ever need more than 20 gig on this machine, I don't even think I'll need 10, so I'm going to try and find a smaller drive first.

I'm just glad it doesn't look like it will be a problem to put a big drive on the older OS, I seem to remember having problems with that in the past, but my memory is not so good.

[Space Fractal]

In my chase the OS was XP. I have actuelly see the problem twice (other was around P200, also used XP too) and both used XP:
http://www.spcug.org/reviews/bl0107.htm

So was no opgrade to the bios here, so nothing I could do, but on one of them I simply brought a external USB2 cabinet and used as secondary drive.

And even if the bios can't see more the 32gb and you put a bigger harddrive like a 80gb, it simply just "cut" to 32gb. So if you only need 10-20gig, it should not been problem to use a 40GB or 80GB, even the bios limit.

[ahofle]

I doubt I'll ever need more than 20 gig on this machine, I don't even think I'll need 10, so I'm going to try and find a smaller drive first.

The 40 and 80 Gigs are almost the same price.  Here are a couple well rated ones:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144126  edit: out of stock

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822144122