Win 98 HD Size Limit?

[gtskater]

Hi

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the size Hard Drive you can have when running Windows 98. I've heard from a friend that the limit is 120gb, but he's not really too sure.

If there is a limit, could you partition the drive?

Thanks in advance

[marcus]

I may be wrong, but doesnt Win98 support drives of up to 32GB, as thats the limit for Scandisk? You can go higher, but SD may lose functionality. Im sure someone will put me right if Im wrong however

[Robin]

I had to format my 50gig partition to NTFS cos FAT32 didn't support it apparently.

[Valken]

I think 32GB is the maximum that the actual file allocation table can understand in FAT32 but I guess you could increase that by using a larger cluster size.

[Papercut]

32Gb is the limit for Windows 95:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;246818

2Tb (Terra bytes!) is the limit for Windows 98:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;154997

although Windows 2000 only supports FAT 32 partitions upto 32Gb.

some bioses prevent fdisk from partitioning disks over 128Gb, which is probably where the 120 limit you heard about comes from.

[gtskater]

cheers papercut, most appreciated i can assure you.

Thanks to everyone else, that info was pretty vital.

Don't you just love the NTSC-UK forums

[andy572]

I was looking into the same thing earlier this week.

It seems that W95 has a limit of 32GB and, for the topic, gtskater and me , W98 fdisk incorrectly recognises disks larger than 64GB. Having said that, an fdisk update is available - giving a new limit of 137GB.

You can find the new fdisk here.

[bcass]

On a similar note, I recently installed Win98SE onto a 123.5Gb HD, and after the installation Win98 reports that 117Gb is free. Now, I know that Win98 does not take up 6.5Gb, so where has that 6.5Gb gone? Others I have asked have said that Windows reserves so much space for system usage/functionality? Is this, or some similar story true? I've checked my BIOS, and it definitely supports HDs over 120Gb.

[Papercut]

It'll be space used up for the fat (file allocation table), plus you'll have huge cluster sizes (each file takes up more space than it needs, the larger the cluster the more wasted).

Also, Hdisk manufacturers measure disk size in 1000s, not 1024s which is what Win98 measures them in. So that 123 Gb size you got might be misleading.

[bcass]

I did think it might be FAT space, but I thought 6.5 Gb was a bit much, even for 123.5Gb... My bios correctly identifies it as 123.5Gb though. Its not a big problem really, 117Gb is more than enough for the foreseable, especially compared to the 3Gb HD I was previously restricted to.

[Papercut]

what does windows report as the actual size of the disk? The fat shouldn't really be larger than a few hundred MB at most.

If you run chkdsk (from dos prompt) it will describe how the disk space is being used up.

[bcass]

120,594,528 kilobytes total disk space
113,116,064 kilobytes free (I have used-up 7.13Gb up already with applications and games)

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit
3,768,579 total allocation units on disk
3,534,877 available allocation units on disk

655,360 total bytes memory
590,512 bytes free

[superkully]

32K units are pretty big, you've got a lot of space just going to waste as padding. I'd recommend partioning into 10Gb size drives (my allocation units are 4K).

Makes organisation better as well.

[bcass]

Hmmm. I just spent the last week re-installing all my apps/games. I don't suppose its possible to create these partitions now I have installed Win98SE? If not, I'll just have to live with loosing 6.5Gb, I'm not re-installing everything again.

[Papercut]

Yeah, there is a commercial tool called Partition Magic that can do it for about ?30, and there is a free 'unsupported' tool called bootpart that might be able to do the same. Could save you 10 or 20% disk space, so might be worth it.