You mean her patches

Actually I don't really care about the versioning system, IMHO I don't think it's that important. What's more important is verifying that it actually works correctly.

Use this FDISK replacement : http://www.23cc.com/free-fdisk/ (ignore the "works on hard disks up to 128Gb" statement... it supports 48-bit LBA via Int13ext)

Windows 9x's disk tools such as Scandisk and Defrag are limited to 128Gb partition sizes. As such, here is a recommended test procedure, to be done on a clean drive.

1. Make several partitions, each less than or equal to 128Gb.
2. Format and install Windows on the primary partition. Replace the ESDI_506.PDR with the fixed version.
3. Copy a large file as many times as necessary to fill the entire drive.
4. Run scandisk on each partition to verify that the data is intact.

Also, 4.10.2186 has been fixed.

How is that possible ? With a normal esdi, 110 GB should display properly, isnt'it ?

And from what I grasped anything below 128 GB should behave just as normal with the LLXX patches.

I think Petr was referring to Fdisk, that works independently in DOS without using ESDI_506.PDR.

That's what M$'s description of the hotfix says. "not supported" must mean untested, not doesn't work...

Created iexpress installers for 98 FE 2186, 98 SE 2225 + ME:

Fix below also here:
http://www.mdgx.com/web.htm#MEU

* Unofficial Windows ME 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) > 137 GB (E)IDE/ATAPI Hard Disk Driver ESDI_506.PDR 4.90.3000 Fix:
http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=78592
Direct download [148 KB, English]:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/ME48BLBA.EXE

Fix below also here:
http://www.mdgx.com/web.htm#9SU

* Unofficial Windows 98 SE 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) > 137 GB (E)IDE/ATAPI Hard Disk Driver ESDI_506.PDR 4.10.2225 Fix:
http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=78592
Direct download [80 KB, English]:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/48BITLBA.EXE

Fix below also here:
http://www.mdgx.com/web.htm#W98

* Unofficial Windows 98 48-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing) > 137 GB (E)IDE/ATAPI Hard Disk Driver ESDI_506.PDR 4.10.2186 Fix:
http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=78592
Direct download [80 KB, English]:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/9848BLBA.EXE

These updates will be added to this list soon:
http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=46581

Keep up the good work.

LLXX - thanks
**********************************************
In advance I apologize, if has broken the rights someone
BigHDD 2.0
-------------------
Include:
esdi_506.pdr - LLXX version 4.10.2225 (up to version 4.10.2230)
defrag.exe - Windows Me
dskmaint.dll - Windows Me
scandskw.exe - Windows Me
format.exe - Free Format 0.91v
fdisk.exe - Free Fdisk 1.21
Documentations and Installation
--------------------
English: http://rapidshare.de/files/26697545/bhdd20e.zip.html

What about esdi_506.pdr included with Windows 95?

If patching is not very difficult it would be great to create also a Windows 95 patch. There might be some hobbyists still using Windows 95. Does Windows 95 support FAT32 anyway?

95 supports FAT32, i have installed 95B on FAT32 many times

Windows 95 retail version and original OEM version (4.00.950, with DOS 7.0) does not support FAT32.

FAT32 is supported in OEM Service Release 2 version and later (4.00.1111, with DOS 7.1).

The original OSR2 ESDI_506.PDR file has version number 4.00.1111, some newer files have versions:
Q171353 4.00.1116
Q192841 4.00.1118
Q175629 4.00.1119 (support of > 8 GB)

More details here:
Windows Support for Large IDE Hard Disks

Petr

If you could give me a link to 4.10.1119 then I'll try to fix it...

the one I have from my Win95b distro is 4.10.1111

The driver structure changed greatly between 95 and 98 (and again with ME), so this is going to take moar time to implement... but I will do it

Any test results yet?

BTW, this is very nice tool: http://www.hdat2.com/
and also the User's Manual contains detail information about many things related to disks.

It also contains the statement:

Petr

1. installed the patch
2. installed fdisk from free dos
3. installed maxtor 300gb drive
4. put more than 200gb on it
5. found the link posted by maximus-decim and installed scandisk and defrag from ME
6. ran scandisk and all was fine
7. ran defrag and all went well
everything works so far
thank you to everyone who had anything to do with this project

Did you copy the files from DOS or Windows? All the copy operations must be done through the driver (disk access must not be in 16-bit "MS-DOS Compatibility Mode"). I have posted a recommended procedure a few posts previous.

yes i did the file copy in dos
i used the win98 cd to boot to a c: prompt

Did you have one big partition or more smaller?

Windows scandisk and defrag do not work with disks bigger than 137 GB.

Petr

Wrong procedure. DOS 7.1 uses Int13x which supports 48-bit LBA. It has nothing to do with ESDI_506.PDR.

Just checking...

Both Windows 98SE *and* Windows ME versions of scandisk and defrag have this limitation?

Yes, if I remember correctly, both are 16-bit application that are able to allocate 64KB max. for clusters table.

Something is written here:
"Your Computer Does Not Have Enough Free Memory to Defrag the Drive" Error Message

Petr

NO DONT MAKE PATCHES FOR WIN95! WIN95's ESDI_506.PDR FILES DO NOT SUPPORT HDDs BIGGER THAN 32 GIGS!

Everyone should be AWARE and have read MS article 246818 that Win95 can NOT support hard drives bigger than 32 gig (and they may NOT even work under Win95):
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/246818/EN-US/

Bottom line, 32GB+ HDs are incompatible with Win95 and require Win98/ME or better to use.

Those "hobbyists" hp38guser mentioned are most likely very, VERY few and more & more PC users are using at least Win98 or Win2000.



Q176529 esdi_506.pdr v4.00.1119 hotfix for Win95 SR2 is NO longer available from Microsoft support as I was told they are no longer offering any existing Win95 hotfixes because ALL support for Win95 had ended. You wont be able to find it anywhere online.

and besides, Win95 OSes are SO last decade and so last century that adding 48bit LBA support under Win95 would also require a complete rewriting or rebuilding of Win95 (yes, even rewriting many of Win95's core system files which have a lot of missing "dependencies" that are included in Win98/Win2000 & higher) which is next to impossible. heck, even Win95's built-in INF files cant even recognize Pentium 2 or even Pentium 3 CPUs and cant work on CPUs faster than 2.1 Ghz as mentioned in MS article 312108:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312108

so LLXX, you need to concentrate on making Win98/ME OSes 48bit LBA compliant and forget about Win95.

Win95 OSes are pretty much dead and already in the afterlife.

I've found the 4.10.1119, but now you say it's pointless to patch

Where does the 32Gb limit come from? That's 64M sectors i.e. 2^26 which doesn't look like a familiar limit.

ok in extreme detail here is what i did
1. download 4102225F.ZIP and unzip
2. copy esdi_506.pdr to root dir of c:
3. reboot using win98 cd to plain old dos
4. dos commands as follows
cd windows
cd system
cd iosubsys
rename esdi_506.pdr esdi_506.bak
5. copy c:\esdi_506.pdr
6. shutdown
7. install 300gb drive as drive d:
8. boot to dos and fdisk drive
9. boot into windows and format drive d:
10 copy lots and lots of files to d:
11 run scandisk and it does not work
12 run defrag and it does not work
13 downloaded this
http://rapidshare.de/files/26697545/bhdd20e.zip.html
posted by maximus-decim
Include:
esdi_506.pdr - LLXX version 4.10.2225 (up to version 4.10.2230)
defrag.exe - Windows Me
dskmaint.dll - Windows Me
scandskw.exe - Windows Me
format.exe - Free Format 0.91v
fdisk.exe - Free Fdisk 1.21
Documentations and Installation
14 installed above per documentation
15 ran scandisk and it worked
16 ran defrag and it works also

thats it all done

From your procedure above it seems like it is indeed working.

Looks like defrag from WinME does work with partitions bigger than 128Gb...

One more confirmation: I'd like a screenshot of the Properties page of the 300Gb drive being filled past 137Gb, ajacent to the information dialog from a successful scandisk'ing.

The 32 GB limit is due to Windows 95 non-support of FAT32 (only FAT16) and the maximum size for a FAT drive is 32 GB (using some 3rd party utilities can get a 64 GB FAT32 drive) but at that size the cluster size is 32 KB and 64 KB respectively which is ridiculously huge and causes a lot of wasted space.

Is this sufficient?

Click to view attachment

Surprisingly, Windows Me scandisk and defrag really works while the original Windows 98 versions not.

Petr

Click to view attachment

Windows 95 OSR2.x DOES support FAT32. It just doesn't support past 32GB.

@LLXX: If you do patch 4.00.1119, why don't ya try to also patch it so it can recognize past 32GB?
Also, can you post a link to where you found it?

the_guy

@Petr, qazaq : Excellent.

@the_guy : It seems the 4.00.1119 I had was actually a 4.00.1116

I doubt the 32Gb limit exists in the driver. Perhaps someone should install Windows 95B (w. FAT32) on a 40Gb HDD or similar. One could also try using the patched 4.10.2186 driver (intended for 98fe).

From http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/bios/sizeGB30-c.html :


Also, there are various references stating that "the FAT must be less than or equal in size to 16MB minus 64KB", i.e. 4MB minus 16KB clusters. Would it be possible to use a 120GB partition with a cluster size of 1 sector (512 bytes)? I have a lot of small files which 32K clusters would waste much space. However the FAT would then be approximately 900MB.

You can (re)format your FAT32 disk/partition with 512 bytes cluster size using FORMAT.COM:
http://www.mdgx.com/secrets.htm#FORMAT-Z
___________________________________

* Microsoft Windows 95/OSR1/OSR2 IDE Driver ESDI_506.PDR 4.00.1116 + VOLTRACK.VXD (4.00.954 for Win95/OSR1 + 4.00.1112 for Win95B/95C OSR2) Fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=171353
Direct download [154 KB, English]:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/Q273468.EXE

HTH

WRONG!

Using patched 4.10.2186 driver under Win95 with 32Gb+ HDs will F*CK your system up and cause BSODs (and cause other problems)! This is why I dont want you to patch Win95 systems, LLXX. THEY'RE DEAD NOW.

Sorry but patching just the esdi_506.pdr file under Win95 is NOT GOOD ENOUGH! Other parts of the Win95 OS have to fully support huge HDs.

AND OHHHHH, reading this from this forum:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1026129864
yea the last thing I want on a 32gb+ HD is for it to mess up computer files under Win95. 32Gb+ HDs are best used on Win98/ME/2000/XP.



ONLY Win95 OSR2, OSR2.1 & OSR2.5 allow FAT32 drives. Win95 original & OSR1 do NOT recognize FAT32 drives as I've tested for myself several weeks ago. Win95 & DOS 7.0 can only accept up to 2Gb partitions.

That's what I said. Windows 95 OSR2.x (2.0, 2.1, 2.5) support FAT32.

the_guy

yup but only FAT32 drives up to 32Gb. Any higher and Win95 SR2 may cause "data corruption" problems.

heck there are not even fat32 drivers out there that will make earlier editions of Win95 read fat32 drives.

And according to the 48bitLBA.com page Win95 also does NOT support or even recognize 48-bit LBA HDs greater than 137 GB and says to upgrade Windows to a higher version:
http://www.48bitlba.com/win95.htm

Ok, sorry for all this trouble. I didn't know anything about Windows 95. Never used it AFAIK.

ah, no big deal hp38guser. Win95 has SO MANY FLAWS that it's best to use Win98 or WinME and install the 48bit LBA patches for Win98/ME to use 137Gb+ HDs. Win95 even chokes on AMD K6 and AMD Athlon 1.1 Ghz+ (and even on Intel Pentium 3/4) CPUs as noted in MS articles 192841 & 234259.

Have any of you actually *tried* to install Win95 on an HDD >32Gb?

I don't believe anything M$ say until I've tested it myself or read through the code.

Micro$oft claim that Windows 98 First Edition also has this problem but it can be fixed with an updated ESDI_506.PDR (.2186 I think...). The problem is described as only occurring on Phoenix BIOSae using BitShift translation. My interpretation is that Windows 95 (OSR2) *will* work on an HDD > 32Gb provided the BIOS is not Phoenix nor is it using BitShift translation.

the 48bit HD technology is incompatible with Win95, FOOL! (no wonder why I'm getting a lot of those BSODs and other oddities when using very large HDs under Win95)

it's just like mixing apples and oranges which does NOT make any sense!

and if you dont believe MS, try asking the people from the 48BitLBA.com site.

any creation of a 48bit LBA driver for Win95 WOULD BE VERY FOOLISH!!

you are only HALF right. ANY kind of BIOS made before Jun 1999 will NOT work with 32Gb HDs (as mentioned in Western Digital's FAQ). BIOSes after that date may work with 32Gb HDs.

and besides, my custom made PC (which now has WinXP) with a 40Gb HD (and using an AWARD BIOS) did NOT work with Win95 SR2 because Win95B had caused a lot of "blue screen" errors before startup; hey Win95 SR2 cant work on machines with superfast CPUs without the AMD-K6 patch MS created. didnt bother installing the patch, reformatted the HD, put in Win98se and then upgraded to XP.

erpdude8, I don't know what kind of problems you have with your computer but I used Win95 until last year when I changed my display adapter and I had no drivers for Win95.
I had 2 Seagate HDDs 120GB (111 GB if 1KB=1024B) and never had any problems with them. There was only one partition on each drive, FAT32, created with Ranish Partition Manager and formatted from windows explorer (not FORMAT.COM).
The same drives were later used to create a disk array using onboard RAID controller. The virtual drive was 240 GB in size and was partitioned with RPM directly form windows and then formatted from windows explorer. One partition, FAT32, no problems.
Scandisk from MS-DOS worked but it was VERY slow. Scandisk form windows didn't - "Not enough memory". Norton Disk Doctor was fast and worked fine (execept on a DriveSpace compressed volume I had, where it reported some non-existent errors).

You didn't install K6-2 patch?? Maybe that's why it didn't work! K6-2 patch contains ESDI_506.PDR v4.00.1118.

Q175629 has esdi_506.pdr version 4.00.1119, Marius '95. I can send you the patch if you want. Just be sure you are using Win95 OSR2 version 4.00.1111 B or C. email me or send me a PM if you need the Q175629 hotfix for Win95.

I just couldnt install the AMD-K6 patch. the problem happened before Win95 loaded and before I got a chance to install the update. perhaps the updated files from the patch needed to be installed from DOS mode outside Win95 as noted from this page:
http://home.pacbell.net/drakcap/Purist10.htm

The K6-2 patch does NOT cover CPUs faster than 2.1Ghz as noted in MS article 312108. MS only made a Q312108 hotfix for Win98fe but not for Win95.

But you were using RAID controllers. Can you use your HDs WITHOUT RAID controllers under Win95? that's the big question!
Also can you use your big HDs without even using ANY Ultra ATA PCI adapters that have their own 48bit LBA BIOSes & drivers.

The Ultra ATA PCI adapters with 48-bit LBA BIOS/drivers bypass a computer's BIOS and the Win95 esdi_506.pdr driver.




YES, GOSH DARN IT, LLXX! Guess you are STILL in the DARK why many large HDs may not be compatible with Win95.

Even Rudolph Loew's High Capacity Disk Patch does NOT cover Win95 which is a good thing. Ditto for Intel Application Accelerator software which not only does not support Win95 but works very oddly under there. IAA works under Win98/2000/ME/NT4/XP.

It is true for Award BIOSes only and it was stupid mistake in the code only, you can check my analysis at
http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/ga586hx_mod.html
http://www.ryston.cz/petr/bios/ga586t2_mod.html

Petr

Two points:

1. KB246818 states:
In that case even the drivers for the ATA adapter could not help.
But if the problem is really in ESDI_506.PDR only, it would be possible to use it.

2. CPU speed.
AMD patch is available for OSR2 only, but I was able to patch ESDI_506.PDR and SCSIPORT.PDR from Windows 95 retail version and everything worked fine. In fact it was very stupid mistake of MS programmers, they just multiplied and divided three constants and on some CPUs it caused divide overflow. But if you have multiplied and divided these three numbers manually and put just the result to these drivers, everything was fine and there was absolutely no change in the functionality. I wrote this to Microsoft in February 2000 and asked them to publish the fix. Their answer was that they replaced all Windows 95 in our company by Windows 98 SE free of charge - that's the reason why I don't work with Windows 95 for more than 6 years.

I suppose that the problem in NDIS.VXD will have the same nature and could be easily corrected - if anybody cares about it. Do you have any idea - it this problem for all 2.2GHz+ processor or just for specific ones? I have installed Windows 95 FPP on Virtual PC 2004 and found no problem - although the CPU is Pentium D 2.8 GHz.

BTW, there is also problem with AMD K6-2 500 MHz processors on Windows Me: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/261641

Petr

I think it would be useful if someone could create a table (or a nice list) for the first page of this thread that shows all the known versions of ESDI_506.PDR, which OS they're for, and what the patched version number is (if it exists) with a link to download the patch.

Windows 95 or 98 or Me or XP has the only one interface that take care about 28-bit or 48-bit LBA - and it is ESDI_506.PDR or other 3rd party ATA driver. Windows, at least 98 and Me, uses 32-bit "LBA" internally the same way for ATA or SCSI devices.

Therefore it make sense to me that in KB246818 are mentioned "Hard disks and other media that are larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size". 32 GiB = 67108864 (64 M) sectors, i.e. the maximum length of the sector number is 26 bits. It is very hard to gues why just 26-bit "LBA" should be the barrier. Sure, there must be some reason why Microsoft wrote this article - but what?

I just added 130 GB disk to my Virtual PC 2004 Windows 95 OSR2.1 and everything seems to be OK so far. Virtual PC emulates i440BX chipset with PIIX4 ATA controller and Windows 95 uses the original 4.00.1111 so far, in case of any problem I will replace it by 4.00.1119 version and repeat. Now I'm filling this disk with data, it requires some time. Here are some screenshots - sorry, they are in Czech language, I forgot to obtain the English version from MSDN at the right time.

The disk was partitioned using Windows Me and formatted in Windows 95.

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment
Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment

Petr

I just got an email response from someone from the 48bitLba.com site and this is what the person told me about Win95 & 48bit LBA:

I apologize for being a hothead this morning; my custom made PC just couldnt handle Win95 properly causing a lot of frustrations for me and decided to put back WinXP on there.

how 'bout adding 48bit LBA support on version 4.10.2226 of the esdi_506.pdr file of Win98se from Q252187. The 48bitlba.exe pack MDGx created has patched 4.10.2225 file. running the 48bitlba.exe patch under a Win98se PC that already has esdi_506.pdr 4.10.2226 file will be overwritten by the 4.10.2225 48bit-LBA version and Win98se users will lose the benefits of the fixes from Q252187; yes I know esdi_506.pdr version 4.10.2226 is NOT for every Win98 SE computer out there but at least there should be some consideration for adding 48bit LBA support on version 4.10.2226 of the esdi_506.pdr file.

BTW - Q252187 esdi_506.pdr 4.10.2226 hotfix listed at MDGx's site:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/Q252187.EXE



if you insist on patching Win95 OSR2's esdi_506.pdr file, LLXX, Petr has obtained the Q175629 esdi_506.pdr 4.00.1119 (NOT 4.10.1119; look at the Win95 version numbering very carefully) hotfix. will be mentioned on MDGx's site soon.

A few Windows 95 screenshots:
Disk filled by 86 GiB files:
Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment
It can be seen that the pie diagram does not show the used space. The same result with 16 GB disk. Not tested what is the size limit for correct behavior.

And here is virtual memory setting - the bug (negative free space) described in KB272620 can be corrected by simple resource editing - by replacing %d by %lu and everything looks well now:
Click to view attachment

Here I have found one bug:
Click to view attachment
The total space occupied by all files (or by selected files) wraps around 4 GB. (corrected in Windows 98)

So far no problem.

Mr. Loew's diskdvr tool shows that ESDI_506.PDR is really used:

Petr

Virtualised hardware is slower than real hardware, so your virtual CPU is probably running at much less than 2GHz.
Interesting. By using the onboard RAID controller I'm assuming that ESDI_506.PDR was *not* used, but either way, this counters "Hard disks and other media that are larger than 32 gigabytes (GB) in size are not supported in any version of Windows 95".
I'll release that soon. It's quite a bit different from the other 4.10.222* series so it'll take more time.

I haven't begun to do anything with the Win95 drivers yet. We need to determine if disks over 32Gb are supported first.

If anybody needs ESDI_506.PDR 4.00.1119 for Windows 95B OSR 2.0, 95B OSR 2.1 + 95C OSR 2.5:

* Microsoft Windows 95B/95C OSR 2.x Compatibility Mode With Large Hard Disk ESDI_506.PDR 4.00.1119 Fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=175629
Direct download [153 KB, English]:
http://www.mdgx.com/files/Q175629.EXE

The author of these 2 unofficial patches:
http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=77218
http://www.msfn.org/board/?showtopic=58780
sent me this note [he prefers to remain anonymous]:

HTH

He could have elaborated just a little a bit at this point IMO by saying where he believes a problem could occur with LLXX patch or what the other code, he thinks needs to be also patched, does.

I can't tell for sure, but just by looking at his notes, I'd say he probably needs more testing and more time to figure out which code needs added, patched, etc... [?]

Anyway, I know he'll send me more details when he has time.

HTH

The only (slight) problem I can think of is not delaying enough between register writes in the new registers initialiser. This may result in data corruption on systems with overclocked PCI buses.

I have the following commands implemented:

These are the commands found in the original file:
I don't think I forgot any of them...

Anyway, release of 4.10.2226 will be suspended until further notice.