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Using more than 512mb ram Update Fix?


mst3kpimp

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My RFDISK and RFORMAT Programs eliminate this wait. RFDISK is essentially instantaneous. RFORMAT might take a minute or two to write out 256MiB of FAT Tables.
USB Hard Drives larger than 2TiB will not work properly or at all in DOS or Windows 9x.

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7 hours ago, rloew said:

My RFDISK and RFORMAT Programs eliminate this wait. RFDISK is essentially instantaneous. RFORMAT might take a minute or two to write out 256MiB of FAT Tables.

Hmmm. :dubbio:

Las time I created a FAT filesystem by hand it was a matter of a few bytes (F8FFFFFF) in the right locations, starting from a cleaned (wiped) device, maybe the time RFORMAT takes is to make sure that the areas are blank and/or wipes them to be sure they don't contain "old" data.

jaclaz



 

Edited by jaclaz
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12 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Hmmm. :dubbio:

Las time I created a FAT filesystem by hand it was a matter of a few bytes (F8FFFFFF) in the right locations, starting from a cleaned (wiped) device, maybe the time RFORMAT takes is to make sure that the areas are blank and/or wipes them to be sure they don't contain "old" data.

jaclaz



 

You're just setting up the partition tables.  To truly test if the partition is DOS compliant and bootable a full FORMAT C:/S/U is required.

If it's done successfully you will get a true output of the entire capacity of the drive.

After it's successful the first time you can perform FORMAT C:/S/Q > Z:\FORMAT.TXT

Now you have a complete backup of the actual capacity verified in a simple text.

This is for full legacy support.  I only attempted this once to see how long it would take to FORMAT the 2TB as FAT32.  This is useful for PS3 systems test.  Unfortunately the result was incompatible with PS3.  There was a 1.5TB limit.

Edited by 98SE
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Do you even know the difference between an MBR and a Partition Header?

FDISK and my RFDISK setup Partition Tables.

The only thing using FORMAT X:/S/U does extra is a scan for bad Sectors. If you have all day or days, go ahead.

It might be of some value of Floppy Disks, but Hard Disks generally use sparing to eliminate Bad Sectors so you will likely lose capacity using FORMAT.

My RFORMAT does not have a 1.5TB limit. I also have a much faster Surface scan tester. It can test 4TiB in less than 8 hours. I also have one that can trigger sparing so the Drive is effectively bad Sector free when done.

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3 hours ago, rloew said:

Do you even know the difference between an MBR and a Partition Header?

FDISK and my RFDISK setup Partition Tables.

The only thing using FORMAT X:/S/U does extra is a scan for bad Sectors. If you have all day or days, go ahead.

It might be of some value of Floppy Disks, but Hard Disks generally use sparing to eliminate Bad Sectors so you will likely lose capacity using FORMAT.

My RFORMAT does not have a 1.5TB limit. I also have a much faster Surface scan tester. It can test 4TiB in less than 8 hours. I also have one that can trigger sparing so the Drive is effectively bad Sector free when done.

I think you missed the reason I went through all the trouble of formatting the hard drive in DOS.  It was the only way to guarantee full compatibility without using a 3rd party partition manager and I think at the time 500GB FAT32 partition was the max possible.  XP has a 32GB partition limit for FAT32.  The PS3 = Playstation 3 does not read NTFS otherwise I wouldn't have gone through the trouble.  Also I was curious how long it would take to do an unconditional format of the entire drive.  It was not about collecting bad sector info.  The drive was brand new.  I wanted to test hooking up the largest FAT32 drive to it externally first.  Later I tried using it internally and the 1.5GB limit is a PS3 firmware issue.

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An unconditional Format clears every Sector. There is no need unless you are afraid of data leakage.
All that is needed to Format is to initialize the PBR Sectors, FAT Table, and Initial Root Directory.

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34 minutes ago, 98SE said:

XP has a 32GB partition limit for FAT32

No. Let's not propagate this false myth unnecessarily! XP formatting tools are artificially limited to 32GiB, but XP works OK with up to 2TB FAT32 partitions, once a 3rd party formatter is used to create them. Ridgecrop's FAT32Format, both command-line and GUI versions is the standard tool for doing it, since way back when. This is so old news... :boring:

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1 hour ago, dencorso said:

No. Let's not propagate this false myth unnecessarily! XP formatting tools are artificially limited to 32GiB, but XP works OK with up to 2TB FAT32 partitions, once a 3rd party formatter is used to create them. Ridgecrop's FAT32Format, both command-line and GUI versions is the standard tool for doing it, since way back when. This is so old news... :boring:

I'm talking about the Partition Manager in XP's Disk Management not what XP could read.  I normally used FAT32 2TB drives for awhile for compatibility reasons.  The program you referenced is an XP program although there were others I had used to create large FAT32 before ages ago using bootable CDs.  I there might have been a few DOS ones that could do it too but I've forgotten most of these tools.  Sadly I now only use NTFS for 2TB and larger drives.  FAT32's 4GB file size limit was too restrictive having to stop HD video recordings every 30 mins. :o  There is eXFAT but NTFS seems to be preferred.

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2 hours ago, rloew said:

An unconditional Format clears every Sector. There is no need unless you are afraid of data leakage.
All that is needed to Format is to initialize the PBR Sectors, FAT Table, and Initial Root Directory.

An Unconditional Format also occurs if you recreate new RAW partitions with FDISK and FORMAT it.  This is standard DOS behavior.

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1 hour ago, rloew said:

That is why I wrote RFDISK originally, so I could rebuild a Partition without erasing it, and to avoid the long waits.

I actually like the Unconditional Formatting.  It just looks impressive going through the percentage.  Even 32GB doesn't take that long.  You have to remember when hard drives were extremely slow that it used to take hours.  Also Formatting SSDs are a blast too.  16GB it's like sipping water.

Most of my high capacity drives because of NTFS partitioning it's just partition and and start writing.  I think of the old school FDISK partitioning as an art form.

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10 hours ago, 98SE said:

You're just setting up the partition tables.

No I am not.

Rest assured that I know what I am doing.

I am writing the FAT tables on a pre-wiped (all 00's) device.

Actually wiping a large device (and/or checking it for bad sectors) is something that takes hours/days, and it makes no sense whatsoever to do it when formatting.

Although I don't normally use such stupidly large devices, I do have a "dedicated" machine to wipe disk(s) overnight (actually using the internal ATA Safe Erase which is WAY faster than *anything* software).

Wiping just the area where the partition table will reside is more than enough in any non-tinfoil-hat, non-national-security, non-mission-critical environment, which comprises probably 99% of computers and 100% (more likely 101% ;)) of those running DOS/Windows 9x/Me.

jaclaz
 

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The limit of 32 Gb in XP for FAT32 is "political", but people should use some "common sense"  (a very UNcommon thing BTW) anyway.

64 Gb? OK.

128 Gb? OK.

256 Gb? Maybe.

Anything larger, though possible, is simply not "smart", the size of FAT tables will become HUGE, the filesystem (and its drivers) are simply not adequate to that amount of data, and all in all file access will slow down noticeably.

Besides the single 4Gb file size limit, FAT32 has another one (actually not that common to reach) which is the number of files in a same directory, see (seemingly off topic):
http://reboot.pro/topic/19643-winsxs-hardlinked-files/?p=182961

So, if it is for testing or similar, it is fine to make huge FAT32 volumes, but one should know how it would be way "better" or "faster" to have several smaller volumes instead.

jaclaz


 

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