largest partition in Win98?

[sdeyoreo]

I will be replacing the C drive and re-installing Win98. What's the
largest partition I can use with Win98? It's been a few years, but as
I recall, the floppy disk that came with Win98 goes in first and boots
from that and somewhere in there is when I partition the drive?

 

[David Maynard]

I will be replacing the C drive and re-installing Win98. What's the
largest partition I can use with Win98? It's been a few years, but as
I recall, the floppy disk that came with Win98 goes in first and boots
from that and somewhere in there is when I partition the drive?

You want the long or short answer?

Assuming you do not have a BIOS limitation:

The short answer is stay under 128 gig.

Fdisk will partition up to 512 gig (which is still much less than the
theoretical FAT32 capability) but various Win98 utilities have problems
with partitions over 128 gig. Scandisk is one, but then maybe Norton
Utilities would work. The built-in Win98 IDE drivers are limited to 137
gig, but if your motherboard provides a custom driver, or you buy an IDE
driver card that supplies a driver, supporting 48 bit LBA then it might work.

Note, these are not things that can be worked around by making multiple
smaller partitions on a large drive. The respective utilities simply can't
address the sectors over 127 gig regardless of how it's partitioned.

Format displays incorrect size information but seems to work nonetheless.

Oh, the fdisk on the CD will report incorrect size too on partitions over
64 gig but there is a download to fix that for up to 137 gig (MS doesn't
officially support over 137 gig).

There may be other problems not listed.

 

[sdeyoreo]

The short answer is stay under 128 gig.

Fdisk will partition up to 512 gig (which is still much less than the
theoretical FAT32 capability) but various Win98 utilities have problems
with partitions over 128 gig. Scandisk is one, but then maybe Norton
Utilities would work. The built-in Win98 IDE drivers are limited to 137
gig, but if your motherboard provides a custom driver, or you buy an IDE
driver card that supplies a driver, supporting 48 bit LBA then it might work.

Note, these are not things that can be worked around by making multiple
smaller partitions on a large drive. The respective utilities simply can't
address the sectors over 127 gig regardless of how it's partitioned.

Format displays incorrect size information but seems to work nonetheless.

Oh, the fdisk on the CD will report incorrect size too on partitions over
64 gig but there is a download to fix that for up to 137 gig (MS doesn't
officially support over 137 gig).

There may be other problems not listed.

Oh man, I was thinking it was around 10GB or so. Maybe that's Win95?

 

[DaveW]

If I rmember correctly, Win 98 can recognize up to a 32 GB partition.

 

[John E. Carty]

The 32GB limitation applies only to the size FAT32 partition that Windows
2000/XP will create or format

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prkc_fil_cycz.asp

 

[David Maynard]

Oh man, I was thinking it was around 10GB or so. Maybe that's Win95?

The MS sanctioned 'official' limit on Win95 is 32 gig.

 

[David Maynard]

If I rmember correctly, Win 98 can recognize up to a 32 GB partition.

Change that to Windows 95.

 

[sdeyoreo]

Thanks to all for answering!

 

[John E. Carty]

The MS sanctioned 'official' limit on Win95 is 32 gig.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/win95/rk03_set.mspx

Tip for MS-DOS Versions and Windows 95 Setup

Windows 95 Setup attempts to install Windows 95 on a computer with an
operating system version equivalent to MS-DOS 3.2 only if that version can
exceed the 32-MB partition limit (such as COMPAQ® version 3.31) because the
operational disk space requirements for Windows 95 can exceed the 32-MB
partition limitation.

 

[David Maynard]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/win95/rk03_set.mspx

Tip for MS-DOS Versions and Windows 95 Setup

Windows 95 Setup attempts to install Windows 95 on a computer with an
operating system version equivalent to MS-DOS 3.2 only if that version can
exceed the 32-MB partition limit (such as COMPAQ® version 3.31) because the
operational disk space requirements for Windows 95 can exceed the 32-MB
partition limitation.

That's talking about a partition being too small, e.g. less that 32 meg,
but the question at hand was what is the *largest* size?, e.g. 32 gig.

Meg is not Gig.

 

[John E. Carty]

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/win95/rk03_set.mspx

Tip for MS-DOS Versions and Windows 95 Setup

Windows 95 Setup attempts to install Windows 95 on a computer with an
operating system version equivalent to MS-DOS 3.2 only if that version can
exceed the 32-MB partition limit (such as COMPAQ® version 3.31) because
the operational disk space requirements for Windows 95 can exceed the
32-MB partition limitation.

You're right, I really should learn to proof read before I post

 

[David Maynard]

John E. Carty wrote:




You're right, I really should learn to proof read before I post

Eh, just a few pesky zeros

 

[Howard Kaikow]

partition sizes greater than 8189mb cause the clustrer size to increase to
more than 4096 bytes, causing more wasted disk space in a typical
environment.

 

[sdeyoreo]

Eh, just a few pesky zeros

Wish I had more of the pesky zeros on the end of my paycheck

 

[David Maynard]

Wish I had more of the pesky zeros on the end of my paycheck

I hear that, all right.