[piikea]

So, after reading through 2 separate threads regarding this topic (& admittedly thoroughly confusing myself by the end) - I proceed to download the NUSB 3.3 & it says its not compatible with my OS ??

I already use an 80GB ext HDD via USB 2.0 with no issues but a new WD 1TB ext HDD is not being recognized by the system (i.e, assigned the next available drive letter as is the 80GB one is). It will need formatting once it is & partitioned (unfortunately) in 250GB (or less) segments as stated in one of the threads about that.

[dencorso]

NUSB is from ME originally. You don't need it if you have ME... well, sort of. You may benefit from its tweaked USBSTOR.INF... Just rename the original and drop in the file from NUSB. Or, better still, grab the most up-to-date version of it from this post. If that isn't enough, get the HDD's VID&PID, using USBView, and let's add it to USBSTOR.INF.

[piikea]

dencorso, on 11 September 2010 - 08:01 PM, said:

NUSB is from ME originally. You don't need it if you have ME... well, sort of. You may benefit from its tweaked USBSTOR.INF... Just rename the original and drop in the file from NUSB. Or, better still, grab the most up-to-date version of it from this post. If that isn't enough, get the HDD's VID&PID, using USBView, and let's add it to USBSTOR.INF.

Opening usbstor110c.7z it asks to add it to archive which I don't understand so probably didn't get that part right. Instead I tried downloading usbstor110c.zip & replaced my existing USBSTOR.INF file w/ that one but HDD still isn't recognized.

USBVIEW.EXE provided ->
Device Descriptor:
bcdUSB: 0x0200
bDeviceClass: 0x00
bDeviceSubClass: 0x00
bDeviceProtocol: 0x00
bMaxPacketSize0: 0x40 (64)
idVendor: 0x152D
idProduct: 0x2329
bcdDevice: 0x0100
iManufacturer: 0x01
iProduct: 0x02
iSerialNumber: 0x05
bNumConfigurations: 0x01

ConnectionStatus: DeviceConnected
Current Config Value: 0x01
Device Bus Speed: High
Device Address: 0x01
Open Pipes: 2

Endpoint Descriptor:
bEndpointAddress: 0x81 IN
Transfer Type: Bulk
wMaxPacketSize: 0x0200 (512)
bInterval: 0x00

Endpoint Descriptor:
bEndpointAddress: 0x02 OUT
Transfer Type: Bulk
wMaxPacketSize: 0x0200 (512)
bInterval: 0x00

Just add this to the bottom of USBSTOR.INF?

(BTW - it shows that a USB device is attached AND shows under Device Manager under Disk Drives - by its serial # I'm guessing(?) but not being assigned a drive letter).

This post has been edited by piikea: 11 September 2010 - 10:35 PM

[dencorso]

Try again using the attached USBSTOR.INF and see whether it makes any difference.
If it doesn't, it's possible that your disk is formatted to NTFS from factory. Or not formatted at all.
Do you know how to use the Ranish Partition Manager? Do you have access to a Windows XP (or 2k) machine?
You'll probably have to repartition/reformat the HDD before it gets a letter (or more) assigned to it.

Attached File(s)

•  usbstor110dp.zip (4.29K)
  Number of downloads: 14

[piikea]

Replaced with file in usbstor110dp.zip but unfortunately still not recognizing it. Strange that it is "seen" in Device Manager. I don't think it's preformatted since it was a bare drive I put into an ext enclosure.

I don't have Ranish Partition Manager nor access to a Windows XP (or 2k) machine.

[dencorso]

It's behaving as it should! If there is no partition defined, it won't get a letter!
Here's how to solve it. Take a lot of care not to partition/format the wrong HDD. The first one RPM will show you usually is your boot disk. Once inside RPM, use F5 to move from HDD to HDD... press it once and wait, it sometimes lags a little before changing to the next HDD. After the screen changes, if it's not yet the Right HDD, then press F5 again. If you have just one internal HDD, pressing F5 once should move you to the USB HDD. The USB HDDs usually appear after all internal HDDs. >>> Whatever you do, you'll be doing it on your sole responsibility and by your own decision, not because I said so. <<< You've been warned.

[piikea]

dencorso, on 11 September 2010 - 11:51 PM, said:

It's behaving as it should! If there is no partition defined, it won't get a letter!
Here's how to solve it. Take a lot of care not to partition/format the wrong HDD. The first one RPM will show you usually is your boot disk. Once inside RPM, use F5 to move from HDD to HDD... press it once and wait, it sometimes lags a little before changing to the next HDD. After the screen changes, if it's not yet the Right HDD, then press F5 again. If you have just one internal HDD, pressing F5 once should move you to the USB HDD. The USB HDDs usually appear after all internal HDDs. >>> Whatever you do, you'll be doing it on your sole responsibility and by your own decision, not because I said so. <<< You've been warned.

Prior to trying RPM I tried "seeing" the 1TB ext HDD at the MS DOS prompt (see attached screenshot) which seems to show a 3rd HDD which I assume would be it - however - the corresponding numbers don't make sense & can't be right??
the system is configured:
Disk 1 is internal HDD #1 = 80GB partitioned C: to J:
Disk 2 is internal HDD #2 = 80GB not partitioned, system labeled it D:
Disk 3 is ?? the 1TB ext HDD?

the numbers 43977 & 94397 seem incorrect (1,024GB should be higher, no??)

This post has been edited by piikea: 12 September 2010 - 01:32 AM

[dencorso]

Sure. But, as I've alrady said, once again things are behaving as expected:

dencorso, on 11 March 2010 - 10:08 PM, said:

FORMAT.EXE works up to, at least 1018 GiB, but above 1TiB a divide error occurs, according to RLoew, in the present thread.

And the limit of Petr's fixed FDISK (based on the FDISK contained in this update: KB263044, which has a numerical display bug) is 512 GB, according to Microsoft (KB280737), and confirmed in the present thread. Suitable alternatives are The Ranish Partition Manager, although it is not adequate to format the partitions it creates, because of defaulting to 16 kiB clusters, or the Free FDISK v. 1.2.1, or Symantec's GDISK (not free), or RLoew's RFDISK (not free).

STFF! BTW, if you like FDISK, the FreeFDISK may be the tool of choice for you.

[TmEE]

how about Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 ?

I generally have used that to do fun stuff with storage devices, though not anything bigger than 250GB...

[piikea]

TmEE, on 12 September 2010 - 04:59 AM, said:

how about Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 ?

I generally have used that to do fun stuff with storage devices, though not anything bigger than 250GB...

I think I may be able to get access to a Windows XP machine so based on denarco's experience (in another thread) - it will necessary or preferable to keep partitions no larger than 250GB each?

[TmEE]

I meant that I have not had drives bigger than 250GB, so I have no idea what does it do with larger drives... my windows install is trashed so I cannot check its help etc. to know... currently preparing a 120GB HDD to recive Windows 98SE

[dencorso]

piikea, on 12 September 2010 - 12:31 PM, said:

I think I may be able to get access to a Windows XP machine so based on denarco's experience (in another thread) - it will necessary or preferable to keep partitions no larger than 250GB each?

If you want to be able to defrag from Win 9x, yes.
If you can live with not being able to do it, you may create just 3 partitions of about 460GB.

BTW, if you're going to partition it on XP, you'll then need FAT32FORMAT.EXE, in order to be able to format the partitions to FAT-32 under XP.

[Ponch]

piikea, on 12 September 2010 - 01:31 AM, said:

the numbers 43977 & 94397 seem incorrect (1,024GB should be higher, no??)

the system was not made for such capacity and obviously cannot display all digits in the columns.
Due to the rounding (1024 vs 1k), 943.977 seems correct.

[jaclaz]

dencorso, on 12 September 2010 - 08:23 PM, said:

BTW, if you're going to partition it on XP, you'll then need FAT32FORMAT.EXE, in order to be able to format the partitions to FAT-32 under XP.

To be picky, "in order to be able to format partitions larger than 32 Gb to FAT-32 under XP".
For the record, there is also Tokiwa FAT32 formatter (GUI):
http://tokiwa.qee.jp...Fat32Formatter/
and SwissKnife:
http://www.compuapps...ment&Itemid=193
that works allright under Win9x/Me.

jaclaz

[piikea]

Ponch, on 13 September 2010 - 04:46 AM, said:

piikea, on 12 September 2010 - 01:31 AM, said:

the numbers 43977 & 94397 seem incorrect (1,024GB should be higher, no??)

the system was not made for such capacity and obviously cannot display all digits in the columns.
Due to the rounding (1024 vs 1k), 943.977 seems correct.

Yes, you're right about that. Makes sense now.

Tried partitioning w/ FDISK but none of the partitions "took" - idk why not. I have access to a Windows 7 machine soon & maybe it will work there.

[dencorso]

If you're familiar with FDISK, the FreeFDISK will present no problems to your using it. You should try it. Afterwards, Win 9x/ME will assign letters to the unformatted partitions, so you can format them from the Windows Explorer menu.

[piikea]

dencorso, on 14 September 2010 - 01:57 AM, said:

If you're familiar with FDISK, the FreeFDISK will present no problems to your using it. You should try it. Afterwards, Win 9x/ME will assign letters to the unformatted partitions, so you can format them from the Windows Explorer menu.

FreeFDISK looks/acts the same as FDISK - is there any reason to think it would work when FDISk didn't?

[dencorso]

piikea, on 14 September 2010 - 10:25 PM, said:

FreeFDISK looks/acts the same as FDISK - is there any reason to think it would work when FDISk didn't?

Yes! The best of reasons. Facts.

If you had followed my cross-thread quote in Post #8 (of this thread) to it's source, you'd know, by now, that wsxedcrfv tested successfully FreeFDISK 1.2.1 with a 750 GB HDD, as he reported in Post #44 of the thread FDISK and FORMAT large HDDs. This is a fact.

As for the Ranish Partition Manager, I've reported using it to partition only HDDs up to 500 GB, but, more recently, I've bought an External USB 2.0 Seagate Expansion 1500 GB drive [with a Seagate Barracuda LP ST31500541AS (5900 rmm) 1500 GB HDD inside], which I partitioned sucessfully with RPM 2.43, although I wasn't able to solve the problem of RPM using 16 kiB clusters in DOS, so I reformated the partitions with FAT32FORMAT, under XP to get them to use 32 kiB clusters. This is a fact.

However, I've only zeroed out the main boot sector and forgot about the backup boot sector of FAT-32, so FORMAT may have taken the sectors per cluster value from the backup boot sector and reformated using 16 kiB again. But I'm sure that zeroing out the first 32 sectors in each partition would be enough to convince the DOS FORMAT to use 32 kiB clusters. This is speculation, but I'm confident it's solid.

So, at present I'm convinced that FreeFDISK may be the best free choice. Then you may format with the Win ME (DOS 8.0) FORMAT, or use FreeFORMAT, or format using the Windows Explorer. In any case, since the FreeFDISK will not have formatted the partitions you create, any of those formatters will use 32 kiB clusters as the default. Only RPM has a fixation in 16 kiB clusters.

[jaclaz]

dencorso, on 14 September 2010 - 11:23 PM, said:

If you had followed my cross-thread quote in Post #8 (of this thread) to it's source, you'd know, by now, that

Well, also, if anyone had followed my direct link to here:
http://www.compuapps...ment&Itemid=193
he might have found that SwissKnife is tested for single partitions up to 500 Gb.
So, for making three 460 Gb partitions it should be allright.

Should anyone want to experiment, there is also this thingy, that I have tested with good results (but NOT with such a big partition ):
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/
http://partitionlogi...ut/preview.html

dencorso, on 14 September 2010 - 11:23 PM, said:

But I'm sure that zeroing out the first 32 sectors in each partition would be enough to convince the DOS FORMAT to use 32 kiB clusters. This is speculation, but I'm confident it's solid.

Why 32?
(being that the bootsector is 1st sector and backup is 6th one?)

jaclaz

[dencorso]

jaclaz, on 15 September 2010 - 04:36 AM, said:

Why 32?
(being that the bootsector is 1st sector and backup is 6th one?)

Because, here, I favor the good old principle of "Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out!"
The bootsector is the 1st sector (= sector 0) but the backup is the 7th sector (= sector 6)...
Moreover, the boot code is split and overflows to the 3rd sector (= sector 2) and its backup is duly at the 9th sector (= sector 8), whith the intervening sectors being the FSInfo (at sector 1) and its backup (at sector 7). All other sectors in the first 32 are usually zeroed out already, so there is no need, nor, however, any harm in zeroing them out. IMHO, if one zeroes out all 32, there's no need to count sectors and decide which to zero out.