160 gig HD in Win98 SE

**Admiral_John** · April 20th, 2004, 01:06 PM

I'm working on a co-workers PC (Dell Dimension, the model number escapes me, but it has a 700mhz P3 with a 30 gig HD)... after determining the HD was dead I recommended she get a Western Digital, and she just now dropped a 160 gig WD on my desk.

I've been looking through MS Support and WD's site but can't seem to get a definitive yes/no... is the software included with this HD going to allow Win98SE to see the full 160 gigs, or is she going to be limited to 137?

Clay "Admiral John" Hamilton
A+ PC Technician

**Platypus** · April 21st, 2004, 01:50 AM

If the BIOS on the motherboard can recognise a drive over 137GB in size, probably unlikely on a PIII, 98SE can utilise it. However the maximum size of any partition will be 137GB, and if you want to be able to use the native scandisk & defrag utilities, no partition can be over 127GB.

If you need to use a DDO (overlay) to access beyond 137GB, whether provided by the drive manufacturer, or, for example the Intel Application Accelerator, this always adds a layer of complexity. It should work, but is a problem if something goes wrong.

I'm always wary of putting stuff that is way beyond the original design parameters in older computers, it often seems to create difficulties. Any chance of back-trading the 160G to an 80 or 120?

There's a useful reference here:

http://www.hexff.com/w98_hd.php

**NooNoo** · April 21st, 2004, 05:12 AM

Heh, if she "dropped" it on the desk platy, sounds like an rma is in the offing anyway...

If the user insists on having that drive you can do two things:

First port of call will be dell with the service tag number and check for a bios update.

Failing that a pci ide card will get round all the problems. They are fairly cheap to buy... assuming there is a free pci slot in the pc, this is a much better fix than DDO.

**BOB IROC** · April 21st, 2004, 10:57 AM

I say if the bios recognizes it just make 2 partitions. 80 and 80, 60 and 100, 40 an 120. whatever suits her

**Squiny** · April 21st, 2004, 11:04 AM

I'm pretty sure you'll be forced to use the Dynamic Drive Overlay software that Platypus mentioned. Usually you can download them from the harddrive manufacturers website. FAT32 and Win98se are just too limited. Like he said though it adds more complexity than should be needed. So, if a problem occurs virtually all recover tools will be useless. I recommend trying to exchange it for a drive that you are centain the bios and Win98se can handle.

**NooNoo** · April 21st, 2004, 11:08 AM

Originally Posted by Squiny

I'm pretty sure you'll be forced to use the Dynamic Drive Overlay software that Platypus mentioned. Usually you can download them from the harddrive manufacturers website. FAT32 and Win98se are just too limited. Like he said though it adds more complexity than should be needed. So, if a problem occurs virtually all recover tools will be useless. I recommend trying to exchange it for a drive that you are centain the bios and Win98se can handle.

FAT32 and win98 limited? They can support two terabytes... thats
2,199,023,255,552 bytes! The drive by contrast is only
0,171,798,691,840 bytes

**Squiny** · April 21st, 2004, 12:09 PM

2 terabytes with a cluster size of 20MB, lol

**NooNoo** · April 21st, 2004, 12:42 PM

OK squiny, how much do you know about fat32 clusters?

Not much it seems

The maximum possible number of clusters on a volume using the FAT32 file system is 268,435,445. With a maximum of 32 KB per cluster with space for the file allocation table (FAT), this equates to a maximum disk size of approximately 8 terabytes (TB).

**Cyphrr** · April 21st, 2004, 10:43 PM

Originally Posted by NooNoo

OK squiny, how much do you know about fat32 clusters?

Not much it seems

Wow NooNoo, did you have a bad day? Don't rip my head off, just concerned about your state of mind. Maybe something I am missing here

**NooNoo** · April 22nd, 2004, 02:47 PM

I dislike disinformation. I dislike people that put up bad information and then justify it with worse information.

People read these boards to get good accurate information. If people like squiny are not corrected the entire board gets a bad rep with a user.

If I correct someone, it is because I am sure of my facts. If they then continue to argue with made up numbers then it is important that behaviour is stopped before they convince someone to cause harm to their equipment.

Greater good and all that

**Squiny** · April 22nd, 2004, 03:36 PM

My comment about Win98 not being able to handle larger drives is actually pretty accurate. I can't remember if it was win98 or win98se that had issues recognizing drives over a certain size, regardless of if its support in fat32 or the bios. It was a flaw in win98 that had to be patched and was available through windowsupdate.

I'm sorry about my comment on the 20MB fat32 cluster size, as I have lost track of fat32 ever since I realized the clustersize scaled depending on the size of the drive. I watched fat32 clusters go from 4k to 32k and simply thought it wouldn't stop and decided to switch gears and embrace NTFS (file security was reason enough).

I'm sorry if you thought my intent was to misinform, because it wasn't. There's something to be said about using tact in your posts to correct people while not insulting them.

**NooNoo** · April 22nd, 2004, 06:06 PM

Agreed, under normal circumstances I do. But your second post made no mention that you may have been wrong about your first post. Neither was it backed up with fact. I apologise for possibly being a little harsh on you. did you mean the Fdisk fix? Strictly it is not a 98 issue in that 98 is quite happy to recognise an 80 gig drive for instance if it has been partitioned with something other than the 98 startup diskettes version of fdisk.

**Platypus** · April 26th, 2004, 12:33 PM

Something that's been brought to my attention on another tech site is that if an IDE card is supplied with Win98 drivers, the 137GB partition size limit can be overcome. If you were content to use third-party drive maintenance utilities, the whole drive could be one partition (which would probably alarm me!). I'm not clear if this is inherent or depends on the design of the drivers, so if this would be a benefit, check the capability of Win98 drivers supplied with any IDE card you consider.

**WebHead** · April 26th, 2004, 12:42 PM

Great news. For Western Digital hard drives that come with the promise card, you can download this driver for it that allows Windows to see the whole drive (for drives larger than 137gb). Yay!

Click here to get the driver. Be sure to scroll down towards the bottom of the page called, "Promise Ultra TX2 Windows Driver" and get it and use it. Ding!