I was just thinking of other ways to get around the limitation. I only said 32GB because that's all WinXP will create for you. Of course you could go higher (upto 137GB) using FDISK.

For extra storage you could use a portable USB2 Hard Disk (formatted to FAT32) as it isn't effected by the limit.

I think this method would be a good option for people that need Win9x for older apps but mostly use Win2k/XP/Vista as their workhorse OS.




How do you hide the other partitions from Win98? (and so that WinXP can still sees it?)




P.S. I have used the patch on non critical machines, but I'm still a touch nervous on recommending this option to anyone who will be storing important information beyond the 137GB barrier.

Its my first post. but I couldn't help but noticing

4102226F.ZIP ( 14.1K ) Number of downloads: 1337


^_^

I have been suggesting for some time that the sticky gets Moderated to show people which file to download because of that figure.

On the other hand, if you read it, it does state which version is for what. The trouble is that the numbering suggests that one is the "latest" version.

Ah well, if people come to that sticky, read nothing at all and download the wrong file, maybe that is supposed to happen! lol

Well, I boot with XOSL which allows setting which partitions are visible. But XP will see the Win98SE partitions anyway so you don't have to worry about it. That is unless you use Ranish Partition Manager and do the famous (infamous?) delete partition info from the table so that NOTHING can see it!

I believe most boot managers allow hiding of partitions. XOSL just happens to be FREE

Hi all,

I'm a continuing Win 9x/Win2K user. The MSFN forum posts (and members) have been invaluable in providing information for a user like me. My old 120GB drives are dying, and I want to move to larger hard drives. I've been reading all the threads about large hard drives & Windows 9x.

After reading through just about everything, I've attempted to write down all the relevant information in one place. I'm sure I missed stuff, and got some things wrong as well. Would you mind checking to see if what is missing or incorrect?

There's a few assumptions made about software and hardware:

-a retail copy of Windows 98SE or ME.
-a 'big HDD' that goes above 137/128 GB limit in Windows 98SE or ME (like my just purchased 500GB drive).
-a modern BIOS and IDE controller that are compatible with big HDD's.
-a software driver like IAA, Enable48BitLBA, or other program that allows Windows 98SE or ME to recognize big HDDs (hypothetically with no problems, for this exercise).

Here goes...

---------------Scenario 1 - Installing plain vanilla Windows 98SE/ME to a 'big HDD' with no data---------------

1) FDISK can create partition(s) up the to the first 128GB.

2) Windows Setup can successfully format FAT32 partitions up to the first 128GB.

3) Windows Setup Scandisk will behave normally, with no ill effect to the HDD or install process.

4) Partition(s) completely within the first 128GB behave normally, with no ill effect from Windows Defrag/Scandisk.

5) Unpartitoned space above 128GB will simply remain unrecognized, with no ill effects from Windows Defrag/Scandisk.

---------------Scenario 2 - Installing plain vanilla Windows 98SE/ME to a 'big HDD' with existing data---------------

1a) Windows Setup can create a partition if there's unpartitioned space in the first 128GB of the HDD (using FDISK).

1b) Windows Setup can use an existing partition (if available) within the first 128GB of the HDD.

2a) Creating partition(s) (with FDISK) within the first 128GB won't damage data in the space above the 128GB limit.

2b) Formatting partitions (in FAT32 format) within the first 128GB won't damage data above the 128GB limit.

3) Windows Setup Scandisk MUST be disabled to prevent damaging data above 128GB limit.

4) Scandisk & Defrag *SHOULD NEVER* be run before installing a 48bit LBA driver, to prevent damage to any data above the 128GB limit.

5) Disable "run Scandisk on bad shutdowns" from MSConfig to prevent damage to data above the 128GB limit.

6) Windows simply won't recognize any partition(s) above the 128GB limit, but will leave it(them) untouched as long as 4) & 5) are done..

---------------Scenario 3 - Adding a 'big HDD' to an existing Windows 98SE/ME computer without 48bit LBA support---------------

1) If its a new disk, partitioning/formatting it will only enable the first 128GB usable.

2) If it has existing data, only the first 128GB will be viewable.

3) Scandisk & Defrag *SHOULD NEVER* be run before installing a 48bit LBA driver, to prevent damage to any data above the 128GB limit.

4) Disable "run Scandisk on bad shutdowns" from MSConfig to prevent damage to any data above the 128GB limit.

5) Windows simply won't recognize any partition(s) starting above 128GB, but will leave it(them) untouched as long as 3) & 4) are done...

---------------Scenario 4 - Adding a 'big HDD' to an existing Windows 98SE/ME computer with 48bit LBA support---------------

1) MSConfig can keep "run Scandisk on bad shutdowns" enabled (???)

2) Copying data across the 'old' 128GB-limit partitions (or across multiple 'big HD drives') is possible with no data corruption.

3a) Windows 98 SE Scandisk and Defrag DOESN'T work

3b) Windows ME Scandisk and Defrag DOES (???) work*

*I find this surprising but I'm pretty sure I read a few posts that Windows ME Scandisk/Defrag don't have the same problem as Win98SE, once 48-bit LBA support is enabled.

----------

So that's it. Maybe its all right, or all wrong (probably somewhere in between). Anyway, I'm just hoping to get all the information gathered in one spot. Please let me know of any further things I could expect to deal with in the above scenarios.

Additionally, I still have more questions like:

-In Scenario 3 - does running Scandisk/Defrag corrupt data on the whole drive, or just data above the 128GB limit?
-Are there any unforeseen issues when booting into safe mode?
-Is there a difference in how Scandisk's standard and thorough modes affect a big HDD?
-Is there any worry about data corruption or instability from other Windows system tools?

You guys/girls are great!

First post! woohoo!

danielc56

I know you can use beyond 137GB of a portable USB2 Hard Disk when you use the manufacturers driver.

but what if you just use the Mass Storage Device driver from the unofficial NUSB 3.2 and don't use the Manufacturers driver. Does windows then access the portable disk using windows ESDI_506.PDR ???




So it looks like it doesn't need ESDI_506.PDR updated?

Am I correct?

Perhaps atlasrune was refering to leet, to primarily describe the behavior or accomplishments of others in the community

Hello folks,

i recently bought a brand new 500GB WD drive. I made one small 10GB partition with fdisk, formatted it and went on with installing W98. Everything OK, I installed all device drivers, no problems so far.

Then I plugged the drive into my existing system:

Intel P4 2.8GHz
MSI MSI 865PE Neo2-P Platinum Edition
256 MB RAM DDR
ATI Radeon 9800
120GB SATA + 80GB ATA drives, both from WD
Win 98 SE

48bit LBA patch from LLXX applied

I made a few partitions with Partition Magic 8.0 as you can see in the picture.

Click to view attachment

The problem now is: if I try to copy my music collection to the drive J: (HUDBA), after some time, I get BSOD with the following text (I tried to translate it, Im not sure if it is exactly the same as in the english version of W98):



Now Im quite puzzled what it means, if I press a key, the copying continues for a while until the BSOD comes again. Does that mean that the drive I bought is defective?

Any help would be appreciated because now Im stuck and cant use the harddrive properly.

What does scandisk say about drive J ?

Has it been formated with Partition Magic or Windows ?

Can you copy your files onto other partitions of that disk ?

No problems, I have performed the standard scan.


Partition created and formatted with PM.


No, i cant.

Lecco, you have my sympathy. Now, tell us your brand new 500GB WD drive, is it PATA or SATA? Because, if it IS SATA, then LLXX 48bit LBA oughtn't help you in any way (read older posts in this thread, and you'll confirm this). Then your problem is getting the right VSATAVSD.VXD and related files, that is the right SATA driver for Win 98SE. The downside is that, AFAIK, only Via provides one, and I do not know whether it is a generic driver masquerading as product specific, or if not. HTH

The harddrive is SATA. I thought, if I have switched the disk configuration in BIOS to Compatible mode, the harddrive would act like PATA and there will be no problem with it. As I see, I was totally wrong.

I downloaded the VIA raid driver, launching setup brings up only an error message about not having the right hardware. Trying to install the driver manually from Viaraid.zip\VIARAID\SATA\driver\Win98-me didnt help. (or at least I dont think so)

I actually read the whole thread, searching for my answer and got even more confused than before...programming isnt definitely my thing.

Well, I hope we all appreciate the accomplishments of the contributors.

However, as one who was misled into thinking that I should download the "latest" version when I first visited this thread, I thought atlasrune was once again highlighting the fact that, comparing the download figures for each version, it would appear that the world has more IBM laptops running Win98SE with >137GB disks than there are desktop PCs doing the same. So unlikely that it seems obvious that most people are downloading the WRONG version. Version 2226 was specifically for IBM laptops with version 2226 of the original Windows file ONLY.

The numbers suggest that most current downloads are by people who are simply grabbing the latest version even though it is the WRONG version.

My advice to ANYONE not sure what to do is to download Autopatcher (this site, other thread) which includes both versions of the Enable48bit patch (IBM laptop and desktop PC) with options menu. If you use that, the only reason I can think of to install the patch individually ahead of autopatching would be either because your Win98SE partition is above the 137GB barrier so the installation fails on reboot (in which case you simply start in DOS and manually switch the file) or because you know that the Win98SE OS will write above the barrier before you can run Autopatcher (rare and requires you to have something else installed which will write there).

My advice to the moderators is to add a note in the download sticky in this thread on each version so that people will see, for example, against 2226F "Only for IBM laptops with version 2226 installed" or similar.

If your mobo has SATA connectors, the CD that comes with it should have SATA drivers on it.

Actually I wonder if it's possible to access SATA drives at all without them installed.

Yeah I'm sure you need drivers to access a SATA drive on Win98

I can acess SATA drives without installing any drivers in Win 98 SE. That might be because Im using the compatibility mode in BIOS. (1x PATA + 1x SATA only)

I really get lost in this thread. Could someone point me in the right direction please? I'm looking for this 137GB patch for PC.

If you have W 98 SE, than get the version 2225.

Many thanks. I'm fairly new to this part of the Forum; hopefully these questions will be of use to others as well:

1. If I go from a small HDD to (say) a new 320GB HDD, will the full size be recognised by win98SE, assuming BIOS support only?

2. Assuming it isn't, and one then installs the patch, is the full size then recognised? Or, what happens?

3. Has this patch ben proven to be successful?

First, your harddrive should by PATA, as my SATA doesnt work properly with this patch as you can read above.

Than:

- create a partition on that drive (smaller than 137GB), using fdisk is ok
- install win98
- install drivers
- install LLXXs patch version 2225
- create as big partitions as you wish with some partitioning program, but try to keep them under 128GB (for safety)
BUT: test everything befory you copy your important data on that drive

The patch has been proven to be succesful at least on PATA drives.

It's probably because you have an Intel chipset.

Thanks. reading through this long thread i notice an important contradiction:

Some say it's only the partition size that is an issue, others that that is incorrect; it's not the partition size but the total size of the HDD. Go beyond the 137GB boundary, and without the patch you'll have deeze problemos. Humm. Guess the latter is really the issue.

Many thanks for the info.

This patch applies to PATA (otherwise called IDE) drives only as it patches esdi_506.pdr.

This patch has NOTHING to do with SATA drives, nor with your issues consequently.

@ eidenk : So what do you suggest? Should I buy a SATA PCI controller? That could help me and with the price around 15$ for such a controller it wont matter.

SATA drives have special connectors. If you can plug them in your mobo it means that there are SATA drivers for your mobo somewhere normally.

Usually on the CD that comes with the motherboard. If you haven't got that you should visit your mobo's manufacturer website, download them and install them IMO.

At least that's how it works here. I have two 250GB SATA drives in my machine. They are using the Silicon Image Sil3112 SATARaid Controller. I found it on the the CD that came with my motherboard.

Unless I am missing something...

Sadly, I dont have the motherboard cd anymore, but as I look on the MSI wepage, there is no driver either.

You can take a look here.

Seems I have been wrong when saying that esdi_506 and the patch had NOTHING to do with SATA and your problems.

Here is what I gathered going on MSI website :

SATA is under the control of the ICH5 chipset



There drivers are apparently the Intel INF Drivers :

http://asia.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=down...amp;prod_no=150

They are only inf files (installation files) in the package, the drivers themselves being taken from windows.

The only file installed by ich5ide.inf is esdi_506.pdr.

So it certainly means it is this file who does access your SATA drive unlike on my own system.

Certainly on such a system a patch is needed to use safely drives of more than 137GB.

I wonder if the Intel Application Accelerator is not relevant to your system rather than LLXX's but I am not sure of that at all.

Have you installed those Intel inf drivers ?

Have you read the pdf manual and made sure you've set it all up as it should ? There are 15 references to SATA in it using the search in Acrobat Reader.

Look here. I have a 865PE chipset.



Of course, that is the first thing to install.


The BIOS is set up, as the manual says.

Maybe that's the best thing to do then.

Pitty that LLXX got herself banned really, as she could have certainly answered you better than me.

Whether there are or can be issues when esdi_506.pdr is made to handle SATA drives basically.

What a shame that LLXX left no contact. So I will buy a SATA controller soon a report about my (I hope) success.

By the way, does anyone know whether LLXX is active elswhere on the internet?

Not knowing why she was banned, I can only assume that she herself was mightily peeved by the whole thing. Otherwise, I can't see that it would've been too hard for her to return in a different guise. Indeed, perhaps she did.

Slightly off-topic, so apologies.

The "RAM Limitation Patch" was split [as requested by a few MSFN users] from this thread and is found here:
http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=107342
Contains all related posts which used to be listed in this thread.

Caution:
Patch costs $20

If anyone is happy to use Compatibility Mode disk access, surely the whole question of Enable48bitLBA is a waste of reading? When I installed Win98SE in a partition starting above the 137GB barrier, I could only get it to boot if I tweaked it to work in compatibility mode. But oh that sucked! It was like going back to 8bit machines lol In compatibility mode, you can access whatever your BIOS can access, can't you? Slowly, but surely anyway!

Oh and P.S. Thanks MDGx

I think you can find her here.

Her loss was a major blow to the MSFN's Win9x community.

I noticed something strange...when I switch to the fresh install of Win98 SE (only drivers installed), the copying is without problem, but it is kinda slow...I calculated 2MB/s. The copying on a SATA drive in the other install of Win98 is fast as usual...30MB/s. (but it makes problems as I described above)

Are you talking about on compatibility mode?

Both systems are used in compatibility mode. Because Windows 98 can use only 4 ATA devices, the CM disables one ATA channel and uses the SATA channel instead.

Surely that would account for the slowdown? Compatibility mode is slow as cold molasses!

No, at least in my old instance of Win98 it isnt, I just tried to copy a big file and measured the speed (via Totalcopy).

SATA partition #1 => partition #2
10MB/s

ATA => SATA
20MB/s

SATA => ATA
25MB/s

Sorry czech lang...

Zkoušel jsi Chipset z Windows98.ic.cz ? Intel chipset INF update 6.3.0.1007 pro novější chipsety 8xx, a neoficiální update od Petra pro 9xx. Úspěšně jsem odzkoušel na i945.

@ Philco : Díky, pomohlo to aspoň tak, že se už neukazuje modrá obrazovka. Ovšem procesor je teďka vytíženej na 100%, což předtim určitě nebyl. (myslim) Při poslouchání muziky se muzika pořád zasekává... Když to v Totalcopy omezim na 5000KB/s (nejvyšší možná hodnota), tak procesor sem tam klesne k 90%, ale pořád to není to pravé ořechové.

@ all : Philco advised me to install some new Intel INF drivers from his site. It helped a bit, I dont get BSOD now, but during the copying, the CPU is being used on 100%, which wasnt the case before. (I think) The music I listen to during the copying skips a lot. If I limit the speed in Totalcopy to 5000KB/s (highest possible value), the CPU usage drops sometimes to 90%, but still, it isnt the best solution.

Appears to be in PIO mode!

Do you know, where the problem was? Call me an id***, but in the fresh install of Win98, the DMA mode was not enabled... My original install of Win98 is maybe (definitely ) corrupted, so thats why there was that BSOD issue... As a proof, take a look on the screenshot I made a few minutes ago...

Click to view attachment

The average copy speed I calculated is 20.854 MB/s (SATA => SATA)

Hi!

I found this thread (and this forum) while searching for a solution to the problem I'm having, and hoping you can help:

I recently replaced my system's hard drive after the old one crashed. The new drive is a Seagate PATA 320 GB, and my system was self-built in March, 2002, CPU: AMD Duron, Award BIOS 6.0, Chipset: VIA KT133A. I installed the drive and tried to configure it as my system was before: Dual-booting Windows 98 SE and Windows XP Pro. The 98 partition is 10 GB and the rest of the drive is divided into 50 GB NTFS volumes.

Everything is fine under XP, but the system has been randomly freezing in Windows 98, usually during writes to the
drive, e.g. while copying to the 98 partition from CD or installing drivers. And now, after installing the sound drivers,
Win98 won't finish booting at all -- As soon as the Desktop appears, one of those "snare drum" dialogs appears with
the message "Please wait while updating system settings..." but the system always hangs before this completes -- Total screen freeze and the hard drive light remains steadily on -- Only pressing the Reset button recovers from this.

I have scanned the disk and it's error-free, and as I say, there are no issues with the drive under XP -- I can even read/write to the 98 partition under XP without problems.

Based on the info I've garnered from various sources, I thought everything would be okay as long as the 98 partition was well under the 137 GB limit, even if the BIOS didn't support 48-bit LBA. (As I say, the BIOS is dated from early 2002, which was kind of in the transitional period.) But these system hangs suggest that the BIOS is not liking the large HDD under Win98, and I'm assuming there's no issues under XP because NT-based OSes use HAL rather than the BIOS. But then, why was I able to install Win98 at all?

Anyway, I suppose I could continue to just use XP and regard the 10 GB 98 partition as useless (except for holding the XP bootstrap) until I can afford to build myself an up-to-date system. But there are a couple of legacy apps I use that only run on 98 that I'd like to have access to, so any help/advice anyone here can offer I would greatly appreciate.

Thanks,

Dave

You did install Windows 98 on the first partition (C:) didn't you?

If Win98 is installed on C: drive (formatted to FAT32) and it is less than 137GB there should not be a problem. And since Win98 can't access NTFS you have basically put the rest of the hard disk off limits to the Operating System.

Could be a bad install of Win98 / drivers etc? Maybe you need to re-install Windows 98 again.



You can do that then repair the XP Boot loader with your choice of operating systems



OPTION 1






OPTION 2

That's not necessarily true. The 320 GB drive is divided in 1*10GB, and 6*50 GB, I presume. This means that there's a linked list of extended partition tables, which are partly located beyond the 137 GB barrier. At boot W98 is following these links, to see if there are supported partitions in the list. When reading an extended partition table beyond 137GB, it will read (semi) random data, which can cause problems.

I'd suggest to just install LLXX's patch. If it doesn't help it will not hurt either. You can do the patching from XP.

I'd also recommend installing LLXX's patch.


I didn't think DOS or Win98?me could even see the NTFS partitions, so why would it affect it? Its only when data has to be written or read from those sections that a problem occurs.



I used to recommend to clients who needed Windows 98 but could only purchase/or already had larger hard disks, that a way around the problem was to only create partitions up to the 120GB and just leave the rest of the disk un-partitioned. Seemed to work fine.

If everything beyond 128 GB is left blank, it will work fine. It will also work fine when you create one big NTFS partition in the remaining space, since W98 indeed will not touch it.

In this case a problem can rise. DaveLH seems to have 7 partitions. That could be 3 primary and 3 logical, but more likely is 1 or 2 primary and 5 or six logical. I've seen several partition managers which create these logical partitions as a linked list. (Maybe all do so).

The primary partiton table defines a 10 GB partition 1, starting at 0, and an extended partition 2 (which is a partition table itself), starting at 10 GB.
Extended partition 2 defines a 50 GB logical partition 3 starting at 10 GB plus a little, and an extended partition 4, starting at 60 GB plus a little.
Extended partition 4 defines a 50 GB logical partition 5 starting at 60 GB plus a little, and an extended partition 6, starting at 110 GB plus a little.
Extended partition 6 defines a 50 GB logical partition 7 starting at 110 GB plus a little, and an extended partition 8, starting at 160 GB plus a little.
...

W98 has to check all extended partitions, to see if they define a logical FAT partition, but when reading extended partition 8, it will read the data what happens to be at address (160 mod 137) ~ 23 GB. This may or may not look like a partition table. Both cases are bad, and can damage the W98 memory structures.

To safely use an unpatched W98 system on a huge IDE disk, al partitions used by W98 and all partition tables have to be below 137 GB.

Ah now I understand what your saying.