Hard drives with 4kb sector-size are now available

[the xt guy]

I know this is a 98 forum. But, your comment "They only work for XP and above." begs the question... how about 2K? Just wondering, as it is one of my oses, that I intend to keep and use for those instances I need Windows. Maybe, I should start laying up some drives if 2K will have issues. Thanks in advance.

I'm glad you brought up the subject of Win 2K with these so-called "advanced format" drives (great comment BTW-I think of them as "so-called" as well). I searched the Internet in vain for a comment or posting concerning Win2K and these drives. Absolutely no mention till your post, even in the 2K forum here.

I find it laughable that WD's press releases (Dec. 2009) on these so-called "advanced" drives calls Windows XP a "legacy OS", when it's right now the most popular O/S in the world! (Granted, 7 will take the lead in a few years but for right now, XP is at the top of the heap).

Since I am a very intentional 2K/98 user, I too am concerned about this very obvious push towards 7, making everything older than Vista a "legacy O/S".

[rloew]

Are RFDISK and RFORMAT in a release state? Your profile still points to geocities.

I have corrected my Profile so it points to my Website redirector.

I haven't created Demos, so they are both listed in my Prerelease and Beta Section.

I provide free updates on all Products.

[rloew]

I found the Buffer limitation that limited DOS to 16KB Sectors, My Patched IO.SYS now supports 32KB Logical Sector Devices.

This brings the largest FAT32 Partition to 128TiB, largest FAT16 to 512GiB and largest FAT12 to 32GiB.

With 24 Partitions, DOS can manage 3PiB, while Windows 9X can manage 384TiB.

[Mijzelf]

With 24 Partitions

How is the partition table organized? The original IBM partitiontable is not usable, is it? Is there another way to define a partition on an internal (boot) harddisk?

[jaclaz]

With 24 Partitions

How is the partition table organized? The original IBM partitiontable is not usable, is it? Is there another way to define a partition on an internal (boot) harddisk?

Why not?

The 24 is given by the 26 letters of the alphabet - A - B (reserved for floppies).

You can have 24 partitions allright normally:

• 3 Primaries
  
• 21 Volumes inside Extended
  

jaclaz

[rloew]

The 24 Partitions don't have to be on one drive either.

My current prototype DDO is limited to 512TiB, so I would need six drives with four Partitions each to support 3PiB.

[Mijzelf]

With 24 Partitions

How is the partition table organized? The original IBM partitiontable is not usable, is it? Is there another way to define a partition on an internal (boot) harddisk?

Why not?

I'm under the impression that the default partition table is depends on a 512 byte sectorsize.

I have already done the reverse (split one large hard drive into smaller drives) in the experimental versions of my High Capacity Disk Patch for Hard Drives larger than 2200GB. A matching DOS DDO, similar to my BOOTMAN packages, will be required for DOS support and to pass the protected mode validation precedure in the IOS.VXD and ESDI_506.PDR code.

Wouldn't is be more elegant to increase the sectorsize, instead of splitting the drive? AFAIK the sectorsize doesn't need to be 512 bytes, and since FAT32 creates clusters of at least 4kB, sectors could get this size without any penalty.

More elegant maybe, but it would require a major redesign. A new partition table format would be required making it incompatable with all existing operationg systems.

I own a 1024 byte sectorsize usb-stick (actually an el-cheapo mp3 player), which is formatted FAT16. W98 has no problems accessing it.

But I couldn't create a partitiontable on it, using linux, while other usb sticks are no problem.

[rloew]

With 24 Partitions

How is the partition table organized? The original IBM partitiontable is not usable, is it? Is there another way to define a partition on an internal (boot) harddisk?

Why not?

I'm under the impression that the default partition table is depends on a 512 byte sectorsize.

A standard Partition Table and Boot Sector Data are 512 Bytes, but the size of the Sector is not important. The rest will just be ignored.

I have already done the reverse (split one large hard drive into smaller drives) in the experimental versions of my High Capacity Disk Patch for Hard Drives larger than 2200GB. A matching DOS DDO, similar to my BOOTMAN packages, will be required for DOS support and to pass the protected mode validation precedure in the IOS.VXD and ESDI_506.PDR code.

Wouldn't is be more elegant to increase the sectorsize, instead of splitting the drive? AFAIK the sectorsize doesn't need to be 512 bytes, and since FAT32 creates clusters of at least 4kB, sectors could get this size without any penalty.

Three years ago I was not as familiar with the internals of IO.SYS and VFAT.VXD. I was not aware that their code could be adapted without a major rewrite.

As it is, several modifications were required to both of them and IOS.VXD as well. This still tops out at 16TiB of course.

More elegant maybe, but it would require a major redesign. A new partition table format would be required making it incompatable with all existing operationg systems.

Subsequently I developed a modified Partition table Format to get past 2TiB, but the caveat above still applies.

I own a 1024 byte sectorsize usb-stick (actually an el-cheapo mp3 player), which is formatted FAT16. W98 has no problems accessing it.

But I couldn't create a partitiontable on it, using linux, while other usb sticks are no problem.

Unmodified VFAT.VXD and the 32-Bit portion of IOS.VXD can handle up to 2KB Sectors, so it is possible that an 1KB Sector USB Device would work.

I would be interested in more details about that MP3 Player. My latest RFDISK Program should be able to Partition it.

[dencorso]

RLoew, since you've studied IO.SYS possibly more deeply than anyone else here, could you perhaps write a standalone decompressor for Win ME's IO.SYS, please? I was on the verge of doing it myself several times, but never found continuous spare time enough to actually do it. It would be of great help to develop and/or port patches to Win ME's IO.SYS. And would also help settling (in case anything can settle it) an open discussion elsewhere, as well!

[rloew]

RLoew, since you've studied IO.SYS possibly more deeply than anyone else here, could you perhaps write a standalone decompressor for Win ME's IO.SYS, please? I was on the verge of doing it myself several times, but never found continuous spare time enough to actually do it. It would be of great help to develop and/or port patches to Win ME's IO.SYS. And would also help settling (in case anything can settle it) an open discussion elsewhere, as well!

I have been concentrating on the Windows 98 IO.SYS, mainly the Boot sequence and the resident code.

I took a quick look at the ME IO.SYS. It appears to only load the initial 2K block uncompressed. The decompressor should be inside.

IO.SYS loads itself in multiple stages so analysis is difficult. I am still looking at the loading sequence for the Windows 98 Version to see if it can be made bootable with larger sectors and/or 64KB or larger Clusters.

[Mijzelf]

I would be interested in more details about that MP3 Player.

What do you want to know? It's this device. When you think it can help you to Support the Community, pm me your address, and I will send it to you. (I just connected it, and saw I was mistaken. It has a 2k sectorsize)

[rloew]

I would be interested in more details about that MP3 Player.

What do you want to know? It's this device. When you think it can help you to Support the Community, pm me your address, and I will send it to you. (I just connected it, and saw I was mistaken. It has a 2k sectorsize)

You may be looking at the USB CDROM component.

Many MP3 Players mount as two devices. A Mass Storage Device where your files go and a simulated CDROM with a Setup Program on it.

[Mijzelf]

I don't think so. This is the output of dmesg after inserting:

usb 2-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2

usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0639, idProduct=6639

usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3

usb 2-1: Product: MP3 Player      

usb 2-1: Manufacturer: KONIG  

usb 2-1: SerialNumber: F03A2468774C1194

usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...

scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices

usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage

USB Mass Storage support registered.

usb-storage: device found at 2

usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning

scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access     KONIG    MP3 Player       0100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4

sd 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0

usb-storage: device scan complete

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 496000 2048-byte logical blocks: (1.01 GB/968 MiB)

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 3e 00 00 00

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 496000 2048-byte logical blocks: (1.01 GB/968 MiB)

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

sdb:

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] 496000 2048-byte logical blocks: (1.01 GB/968 MiB)

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through

sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI removable disk

and this the output of fdisk -l:

Sectorsize is 2048 (not 512)

Disk /dev/sdb: 1015 MB, 1015808000 bytes

32 heads, 61 sectors/track, 254 cilinders

Unit = cilinders of 1952 * 2048 = 3997696 bytes

mount:

/dev/sdb on /media/KONIG type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,noatime,uhelper=hal,shortname=lower,uid=10001,flush,utf8)

[rloew]

RLoew, since you've studied IO.SYS possibly more deeply than anyone else here, could you perhaps write a standalone decompressor for Win ME's IO.SYS, please? I was on the verge of doing it myself several times, but never found continuous spare time enough to actually do it. It would be of great help to develop and/or port patches to Win ME's IO.SYS. And would also help settling (in case anything can settle it) an open discussion elsewhere, as well!

I was able to decompress the Windows ME IO.SYS file and combine the data to produce an uncompressed IO.SYS file. It turned out that the entire file is decompressed in one operation. This made it a lot simpler.

@Mijzelf: I don't have a Linux system to test my MP3 Player on. Windows ME USB Drivers mount mine as two separate Devices.

I was able to mount a FAT Filesystem on a CD-ROM so I already have a way of setting up a 2KB Logical Sector Device.

[dencorso]

I was able to decompress the Windows ME IO.SYS file and combine the data to produce an uncompressed IO.SYS file. It turned out that the entire file is decompressed in one operation. This made it a lot simpler.

Wow! That was fast! Way to go, RLoew! You do rock!

I presume you did it by hand... Please, do consider creating a decompressor tool to automate the process. Besides the default IO.SYS for hard disks and the one that comes in the EBD floppy, three other flavours of the Win ME IO.SYS are known: the one in the bootable floppy image contained in Win ME's CD, and those embedded in discopy.dll, retrievable with DiskExtract, thanks to Nuno Brito (there are two flavors of it, one in the discopy.dll from Win XP and another in the same dll from Vista or 2k3), not to mention those in KB311561... so that an automated solution would be a wonderful tool to have handy.

BTW, if I'm not mistaken, the compressed part starts with the identifier MSCM (which is reminescent of MSCF, the .cab file identifier), right?