Partition Size Limit

Hi Peter,

I'm almost sure you will run into the 127GiB-problem. (I have tested this in Windows 98SE, but in the web they say it's present in Me, as well.)

When Windows writes the first sector above this border it actually writes to (absolute) sector 0, the second to sector 1, and so on. This of course results in damage to vital structures on the disk. At least it overwrites the Master Boot Record. This results in loss of any data on the disk.

You can test your disk with this utility:

ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/h2test16.zip

It was published in the German c't Magazin 26/2007. Authors don't allow commercial use. It is free for personal use.

The program writes files slightly smaller than 2GiB and tries to read them from the expected location.

BEWARE: Test this on a disk without valuable data on it. In case it doesn't pass the test everything will be lost!

The program must be started at the command line. The test files will be created in the current directory. Syntax is shown in a readme file - but this is in German, so I'll give this in English:

h2test size [-r]

"size" is the amount of data to be written expressed in megabytes

-r means "read only". In this case the data files 1.h2t, 2.h2t... must be present already.

Hint: Don't specify a "size" larger than the size of your disk. The program will stop writing due to "disk full" error. This means, program cancels before it comes to the read action.
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I don't think that the "fdisk" problem is related to the problem above. It simply doesn't work. Leave it to ADD. Version 10 worked for me with a 500GB drive.
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The 127GiB problem is DISK-related, not partition related. You cannot circumvent this by dividing the disk into several smaller partitions. You CAN get around this by making the first partition smaller than 127GiB, and not using the rest. However, I doubt this was your intention when you bought the TB-drive :)

Regards,
Robert

Bob,

I had to go out of town. I'm back now and am going to finish working on this. Thank you for the info. You're talking about the 48-bit LBA issue, right? Well, I started reading about this and found that there are a couple of tricks to get around it. Check this website.

http://www.48bitlba.com
http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm

Seems like this may not be such a difficult issue at all. This hard drive is advertised to work with win98/ME anyway. I doubt they'd lie about that. I let Windows install it's own driver at first, leaving me with a green question mark in the Device Manager (which still isn't bad and is supposed to be usable), but then I installed the driver from Cavalry and now the mark's gone and the DM doesn't report any problems.

Now, there is a test file on that website to check if a computer supports 48-bit LBA, but they want $10. I skipped that. There is a free 48lbachk.exe provided by Intel one can download, but that one didn't work for me. It wouldn't detect my 3 drives properly (two 60GB internal and the one external from Cavalry). Maybe because I have an AMD chip here.

But then I clicked "Rudolph Loew's 48-bit Patch for Windows 98/98SE/ME" in the Tools section on that website. Took me to the author's page where I downloaded the High Capacity Disk Patch. Inside, there is a file called 48bitlba.exe for testing your system. I ran it and it is properly reporting the size of my 2 internal drives and that they are not 48-bit. It is also reporting the correct size for the external and says that it is a 48-bit drive, and it also reports that the 48-bit LBA support on my system is VERIFIED.

Maybe it was some patch I did at some point or maybe the controller card in the PC is the reason, but I think I'm fine.

I still want to do the 2GB file test you suggested. I don't quiet understand how to use it. When I clicked on the file, all it seemed to want was the size information, but how do I select which drive I want to test? I can't risk it happening on the 2 internals. They're almost full. Does it work on the specific drive the file is ran from, meaning do I copy it to the external drive and it will automatically test that one?

Finally, thank you for the suggestion to look into this whole 48-bit thing!

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the interesting links. I browsed through the pages, I'll give them a closer look when I've got more time.

> You're talking about the 48-bit LBA issue, right?

Yes.
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> I let Windows install it's own driver at first, leaving me with a green
> question mark in the Device Manager (which still isn't bad and is supposed
> to be usable), but then I installed the driver from Cavalry and now the
> mark's gone and the DM doesn't report any problems.

I guess the question mark showed because the drive was an external USB drive. I don't think this is related to the 48-bit issue. The driver will Windows only make "understand" that there is one more hard disk present now. You probably will still run into the 48-bit issue.

I have tested an internal 500GB drive. It was recognized instantly and OK. However, it did NOT work above 127GiB.
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> ... I clicked "Rudolph Loew's 48-bit Patch for Windows 98/98SE/ME"

It sounds reasonable to me that there IS a patch to make this work. I remember faintly that a guy claimed to have a patch that worked with a certain Windows version only (Windows 98 SE German). I haven't tested this, but there were no negative reports about it.
--

> I still want to do the 2GB file test you suggested.

Yes, I think this is a representative test, because it does what you will do "in real" - write files to the disk until it is full.

Here is how h2test works.

First, prepare a directory (=folder) on the drive you want to test. Say, the drive has letter F:, and you create a directory \TEST. You can do this in Windows Explorer. Copy h2test.exe to this directory.

Then open the command line window. Type the following. Each line is input with the "Enter" key.

f:
cd \test
h2test 300000

When you are done, you can end your command line session with

exit

The last command writes 300GB to disk. The resulting files 1.h2t, 2.h2t... are written to F:\TEST. This may take a lot of time.

The first line, "f:", makes F: your "current" drive.
The second line, "cd \test", will make F:\TEST your current directory.

You will see what is "current" when you watch how the command processor responds. This is what the computer writes, not you - the so called "prompt".

After entering "f:" the prompt looks F:\something> (probably F:\>)
After entering "cd \test" the prompt looks F:\TEST>
This is what I meant saying "The test files will be created in the 'current directory'."
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If you got a patch that will make your drive pass the test, please let me know what patch it is and where to get it. Thank you.

Regards,
Robert

Hi Bob,

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/1962/h2test.jpg

I ran the test is everything is OK. Look at the picture. So it is definitely possible to work this out on a win98/ME system.

I think what I would do in your case is to first look at the specs for your hard drive, maybe even email the manufacturer and ask, to see if it's win98 compatible. If so, look if they have a specific win98 driver on their website. If that doesn't get you going, I'd look at the Tools section at 48bitlba.com. I think you should download that patch from Rudolph Loew and run the test file inside just to see what's going on (48bitlba.exe). The full patch costs $10, but that's peanuts if you're tired of messing with this and want to get it working. This is from the readme file inside:

"The High Capacity Disk Patch Program patches Windows 98/98SE/ME to provide direct support for Hard Drives larger than 137GB without requiring a controller card or the Intel Application Accelerator which can only be used with some Intel Chipset Motherboards. The Patch installs support for the 48-Bit LBA addressing mode required for Hard Drives larger than 137GB."

There are also different drivers at the Tools section. Click on this link there -> Win98: Enable 48-bit LBA patch for Windows 98 posted on MSFN.ORG.

"For those that don't know, this is an attempt to implement 48-bit LBA support into Windows 98se's default IDE driver, enabling the use of hard drives in excess of 128Gb. This is not just another variant of Loew's "High Capacity Disk Patch" because

1] It's completely free (and of course, has no guarantee)
2] Addressing to 2048Gb is possible (limit of FAT32)
3] A large portion of driver code has been rewritten and optimised
4] LBA-48 commands implemented in separate routines instead of "patched into" existing 28-bit's code
5] Slightly increased performance over Loew's patch due to [4]"

So there are at least a couple of ways of dealing with this and probably more, if you look at all the drivers on that website. My PC works and I didn't even have to do anything, except for installing the driver from Cavalry. So good luck. Devise a plan and get at it. I'll keep checking here.

FYI, if you're wondering why I'm still bothering with winME, it's because - along with storage needs - I have a lot of older games installed like DeusEx, System Shock 2, Alien vs Predator 1+2, Drakan, Gothic 1+2, etc., and I don't want to just lose them. The PC is working great otherwise and I have no intention of getting rid of it, then trying to get these to work on a newer system. I have 3 PCs right now, the other two being XP, although I'm giving one away and am going to buy a brand new one with Windows 7 on it.

Thanks again for your interest in my problem and for the test file.

Hi Peter,

it's great to see that this works. Thank you for your feedback.

Robert

In trying to partition a new 300 gig HD, Disk Director only allows 7+ gig partition size. Nothing I do seems to allow me to make the partition larger.
Help.

Can you post a screenshot of what DD shows for the drive? It may help to see it.