48 bit LBA, does it ever really work?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Wooducoodu
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Wooducoodu

I have an Albatron PX875P board with a Samsung 160GB HDD and I dual boot
Win98 and Win2K both with all the lastest updates. The drive is correctly
recognized in the BIOS and it appeared to be correctly recognized in
windows, I have it partitioned into (2) 80GB drives. Windows 98 reports the
capacity of both partitions as 74.5GB and Win2Ks Disk Manager shows the same
with a total disk capacity of 149GB. Everything seemed to be working fine
until recently when the total used space on the 2 partitions reached 128GB.

My C: drive became completely corrupt and after I restarted it wasn't even
recognized as being formated. I've since repartitioned and formatted and
tried restoring from backups and found that I can fill either partition but
when the next partition reaches about half it's capacity the other partition
becomes corrupt again. I also noticed that a file recovery program I tried
(in both win98 and win2k) is reporting the total disk capacity as 128GB but
each partition is still reported as 74.5GB. I've run thorough scan disks and
Samsungs HDD Utility and neither find any problems with the drive so what
can be going wrong and how do I fix it???
 
I have an Albatron PX875P board with a Samsung 160GB HDD and I dual boot
Win98 and Win2K both with all the lastest updates. The drive is correctly
recognized in the BIOS and it appeared to be correctly recognized in
windows, I have it partitioned into (2) 80GB drives. Windows 98 reports the
capacity of both partitions as 74.5GB and Win2Ks Disk Manager shows the same
with a total disk capacity of 149GB. Everything seemed to be working fine
until recently when the total used space on the 2 partitions reached 128GB.

My C: drive became completely corrupt and after I restarted it wasn't even
recognized as being formated. I've since repartitioned and formatted and
tried restoring from backups and found that I can fill either partition but
when the next partition reaches about half it's capacity the other partition
becomes corrupt again. I also noticed that a file recovery program I tried
(in both win98 and win2k) is reporting the total disk capacity as 128GB but
each partition is still reported as 74.5GB. I've run thorough scan disks and
Samsungs HDD Utility and neither find any problems with the drive so what
can be going wrong and how do I fix it???
Click to expand...

I had drive corruption once on a large drive. It had FAT32 format and
I had tried to copy a file which exceeded the 4GB file limit.

Also, Win2k is supposed to not be able to access a system drive larger
than 32GB unless you use NTFS (looks like some old code MS failed to
update. Maybe they just want you to switch to NTFS).


--
94 days until the winter solstice celebration

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to
hang a question mark on the things you have long taken
for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
 
I have an Albatron PX875P board with a Samsung 160GB HDD and I dual
boot Win98 and Win2K both with all the lastest updates. The drive is
correctly recognized in the BIOS and it appeared to be correctly
recognized in windows, I have it partitioned into (2) 80GB drives.
Windows 98 reports the capacity of both partitions as 74.5GB and
Win2Ks Disk Manager shows the same with a total disk capacity of
149GB. Everything seemed to be working fine until recently when the
total used space on the 2 partitions reached 128GB.

My C: drive became completely corrupt and after I restarted it wasn't
even recognized as being formated. I've since repartitioned and
formatted and tried restoring from backups and found that I can fill
either partition but when the next partition reaches about half it's
capacity the other partition becomes corrupt again. I also noticed
that a file recovery program I tried (in both win98 and win2k) is
reporting the total disk capacity as 128GB but each partition is still
reported as 74.5GB. I've run thorough scan disks and Samsungs HDD
Utility and neither find any problems with the drive so what can be
going wrong and how do I fix it???
Click to expand...

The difference between 149GB and 160GB is decimal and 'binairy' gigs.
149 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 = 160 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000

W2000 have to have SP3 to support LBA 48, and it must be enabled in
registry.
<support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;305098>

About 98:
<www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm>
 
Wooducoodu said:
My C: drive became completely corrupt and after I restarted it wasn't even
recognized as being formated. I've since repartitioned and formatted and
tried restoring from backups and found that I can fill either partition but
when the next partition reaches about half it's capacity the other partition
becomes corrupt again. I also noticed that a file recovery program I tried
(in both win98 and win2k) is reporting the total disk capacity as 128GB but
each partition is still reported as 74.5GB. I've run thorough scan disks and
Samsungs HDD Utility and neither find any problems with the drive so what
can be going wrong and how do I fix it???
Click to expand...
You've not enabled 48bit LBA support.
 
Gary H wrote in
Also, Win2k is supposed to not be able to access a system drive larger
than 32GB unless you use NTFS (looks like some old code MS failed to
update. Maybe they just want you to switch to NTFS).
Click to expand...

Yes it is. It just won't format a 32+ gig partition as FAT32. It can read
them just fine.
 
Gary H wrote in

Yes it is. It just won't format a 32+ gig partition as FAT32. It can read
them just fine.
Click to expand...

Note that my statement was about a SYSTEM DRIVE (the drive with win2k
on it), not just a data drive. Are you sure you checked that?

--
93 days until the winter solstice celebration

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to
hang a question mark on the things you have long taken
for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
 
Gary said:
Note that my statement was about a SYSTEM DRIVE (the drive with win2k
on it), not just a data drive. Are you sure you checked that?
Click to expand...

Microsoft explains that if you just really really want to use a large FAT32
partition as the system drive then format it with a win98 startup disk
(within those limits) or a third party utility and install to it.
 
Microsoft explains that if you just really really want to use a large FAT32
partition as the system drive then format it with a win98 startup disk
(within those limits) or a third party utility and install to it.
Click to expand...

OK. I had not had experience with this, but read a MS article. That's
why I said "SUPPOSED to not allow" rather than "does not allow".

It looks like some parts of MS don't know what the other parts are
doing. Such inconsistancies are to be expected in a big corporation.

--
93 days until the winter solstice celebration

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to
hang a question mark on the things you have long taken
for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
 
Gary said:
OK. I had not had experience with this, but read a MS article. That's
why I said "SUPPOSED to not allow" rather than "does not allow".

It looks like some parts of MS don't know what the other parts are
doing. Such inconsistancies are to be expected in a big corporation.
Click to expand...

Well, Microsoft doesn't make it as clear all in one swoop as I presented
it. You have to survey a couple of their articles to put it all together.

At any rate, here's a site with the procedure laid out.

http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_on_large_fat32_partitions.htm

(The title says XP but it applies to Windows 2000 too, as they explain in
the article)
 
Well, Microsoft doesn't make it as clear all in one swoop as I presented
it. You have to survey a couple of their articles to put it all together.

At any rate, here's a site with the procedure laid out.

http://www.petri.co.il/install_windows_xp_on_large_fat32_partitions.htm

(The title says XP but it applies to Windows 2000 too, as they explain in
the article)
Click to expand...

For some reason, that article says there's a limit of 32GB, then
contradicts itself.

That DOESN'T make it look very reliable.

--
93 days until the winter solstice celebration

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to
hang a question mark on the things you have long taken
for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
 
Gary said:
For some reason, that article says there's a limit of 32GB, then
contradicts itself.
Click to expand...

No it doesn't. The limit is that Windows 2000/XP won't FORMAT the dern
thing larger than 32 gig so you format it with something else and then
install to the partition you made.
That DOESN'T make it look very reliable.
Click to expand...

Then use NTFS.
 
No it doesn't. The limit is that Windows 2000/XP won't FORMAT
the dern thing larger than 32 gig so you format it with
something else and then install to the partition you made.
Click to expand...

Windows 2000 formats my 120 GB drives without any problems,
even at installation process. The limit is 137 GB.
 
A 160gig drive in disk manufacturer gigabytes is only 149gig in real gigabytes.
That stems from the fact that disk manufacturers consider a gigabyte
1,000,000,000 bytes, while the rest of the world consider a gigabyte 1024 * 1024
* 1024, which comes to 1,073,741,824. Do the math, you get 149.
 
Windows 2000 formats my 120 GB drives without any problems,
even at installation process. The limit is 137 GB.
Click to expand...

Windows 2000 will not format a 32+ Gig drive with a FAT32 filesystem. It
will only format things that large as NTFS, which is the point of this part
of the discussion.
 
Windows 2000 formats my 120 GB drives without any problems,
even at installation process. The limit is 137 GB.
Click to expand...

There IS a 137GB (actually 128GB, 137 comes from using 1000 instead of
1024) limit. It's in the HD hardware. More recent systems have a
higher limit (and should be able to handle up to 128 EB (1024*128 TB,
or 1024*1024*128 GB). Drives aren't nearly that big yet, but 400GB
drives do exist (I have a 250GB).

--
92 days until the winter solstice celebration

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to
hang a question mark on the things you have long taken
for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
 
Windows 2000 will not format a 32+ Gig drive with a FAT32 filesystem. It
will only format things that large as NTFS, which is the point of this part
of the discussion.
Click to expand...

The problem was that, the article I objected to leaves out the word
"format" and claims that w2k is limited to 32GB FAT32 drives. THAT
claim is not true, as the article later contradicts itself.

--
92 days until the winter solstice celebration

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to
hang a question mark on the things you have long taken
for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
 
No it doesn't. The limit is that Windows 2000/XP won't FORMAT the dern
thing larger than 32 gig so you format it with something else and then
install to the partition you made.
Click to expand...

Here is the entire quote of the paragraph that says there's a limit: "
Windows 2000, XP and Windows Server 2003 support FAT32 partitions
(Windows NT 4.0 did not) but there is a maximum size limit of 32GB."

Sorry, I don't read invisible text (where the word "format" must be).
Then use NTFS.
Click to expand...

Makes no sense here. My comment was on the reliability of that
article.

--
92 days until the winter solstice celebration

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to
hang a question mark on the things you have long taken
for granted." -- Bertrand Russell
 
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