I have just installed Windosws 98 SE on an Asrock 4coredual-sata2 -Intel core 2 quad processor -2 Gb of DDRII -

and

I have used a 120Gb partition inside a 250 Gb IDE disk drive.

When installing I was quite convinced that the 137 Gb limit applies to the partition dimension.

Now I am quite aware that the limit applies to the disk size no matter how it is partitioned !

If this is the case at some point my installation is going to fail?

Or may be that on this mboard (Asrock 4coredual-sata2) the Via Arena drivers are capable of breaking the 137 Gb barrier?

If the drivers Via Arena can break the 137Gb limit, when does this applies?

Does it apply only to Sata disks?
Does it apply to both Ide and Sata disks?

AFAIK, you'll need LLXX patched ESDI_506.PDR v. 4.10.02225 (since your system is not an IBM notebook) or you'll
run against the 137 GB (= 127 GiB) sooner or later. It is needed for IDE (i.e. PATA) disks and for SATA, when they're set to emulate PATA through BIOS. For SATA working as SATA or for USB disks there is no 137 GB HDD limit, and Via Hyperion 4-in-1 or NUSB 3.3 will work without any problems. HTH.

Many thanks!!

And this I guess allows me to configure my Pc by cloning (and using) windows 98 directly on the Sata disk.

In the meanwhile I have installed windows 98 on the ide disk in a 120 gb Partition and I feel quite sure that leaving the remaining space unused I am going to be completely safe?

What if I use the space for a big XP or Linux Partition?

Reading the posts I have understood that I would be still safe having windows 98 on the first 120 Gb partition and using the remaining space of the disk with another big partition (Nfts or Ext3) not accessible by windows 98.

I understand that in such a case all the partition tables of the disk would be under the 137 Gb limit?

Many thanks again to dencorso for the fast answer and thanks for all the useful posts in this forum.

Hi, vick1111!
If you do have PATA disks installed, I do suggest you install LLXX 48-bit LBA, just to be on the safe side. You are NOT truly safe even with a partition smaller than 127GiB, unless you apply the patch. While it's unneeded for SATA and USB HDDs, it'll do no harm to those types of HDDs, and will protect you from problems with your IDE HDDs.
Grab ESDI_506.PDR 4.10.2225 Fix from MDGx's site, it installs the patched file and adds an entry on Add/Remove, that can be useful if ever it causes you any problem. HTH

Thanks to dencorso for the help and suggestion.

I will give a try LLXX 48-bit LBA patch after some other experimentations with my new system in the search of a stable configuration.

Even if I remain with the convinction that the 120 Mb Fat 32 first partition used by windows 98 and the rest of the disk used by Linux or XP gives me a safe environment into a 250 Gb hard disk drive.

Dencorso states:" an entry on Add/Remove can be useful if ever it causes you any problem" .
So the point is about what is more safe:
1) the patch which could contain some bugs
2) the use of a simple disk partition as the one I have for Windows 98
?

Yet, the patch has been out for a long time, now, and there is no report of any bug found in it.
As many people, me included, are using it from just after definitive release, any major problems should already have surfaced, and none did. IMHO, the patch is the safer solution. HTH

Yes, one problem have surfaced:
If I install the patch on my computer, Hard disks drives are forced into DOS-compatibility mode.

I'm worried because I just bought a 400Gb drive...