137 GB limit & partitioning question

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aimee24

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An elderly neighbor has an HP Pavilion Celeron 433, w/ Intel 440ZX chipset (82443ZX). Don't have the exact Asus mobo model (yet), but might be MEB-VM or MEZ-VM.

Either way, question is
IF there are no BIOS updates to enable 48bit LBA & allow disks > 137 GB, (is a BIOS update, but no indication it addresses 48bit LBA)

AND can't use Intel's Application Accelerator (can't - chipset too old)

AND she's not buying a PCI controller (she's not),

could you just partition a new drive into partitions < 137 GB (say 120 GB) using a partitioning utility that will run from DOS? Before the OS is installed, i.e., Win 98se?

If you partition, say a 160 GB disk into 120 GB & 40GB partitions (roughly), would the BIOS & Win 98 most likely recognize:

1) the HDD at all?
2) both partitions? Or only 1st 120 GB partition, or neither?

This paragraph is from Seagate's support site, and indicates a drive (they're discussing the 32 GB limit) could be partitioned to avoid the capacity limit issue:

If you format the drive with the CLJ or AC jumper then the drive capacity will be limited to 32GB. After removing the CLJ or AC jumper the drive will still be recognized as 32GB. You must reformat the drive without the CLJ or AC jumper to gain the full capacity of the drive. The other option is to create a second partition with the remaining unallocated disc space.


Thanks.
 
well, if the motherboard won't support 137gb hard drives then that's about all you can do...

pci ide cards are cheap, maybe around $25 or so. If not then maybe the bios will recognize the first 137gb, which means your only wasting 23gb out of 160gb which probably won't be used anyways seeing as how old the system is.

If you can only get 32gb's out of it...well I think that's ok too since with that type of system I highly doubt it will be used as a multimedia device frequently enough to fill a 160gb hd.

I know it's a waste and at one point I would have done everything to make it accessible, but now I've given up and just basically choose whatever is best given my constraints. Of course, I let them know that so it becomes their choice if they want to drop a little more than a jackson to have a possibility of getting their money's worth on something that they might not even use or need.
 
Thanks,

Agreed, wasting the space above 132GB on this system is no big issue.

However, I'm not sure if your answer indicates in this case, the HDD will most likely be recognized and the 1st 137 GB usable (actually 1st 127, I think). That's assuming using some DOS based partitioning utility to format a partition < 137GB (if needed), before even trying to install Windows or before worrying about BIOS recognizing the disk or its full capacity.
 
The short answer is "no" - I once tried doing exactly that on an old computer (using WinXP SP2). I created a 120GB partition on a 160GB drive, installed the OS (no problems), then created an additional 29GB partition on the remainder (the total capacity was 149GB after allowing for the usual GB/GiB confusion). I could do a quick format of the second partition, but either a full format or a chkdsk run would get stuck at around 27%, which if you do the sums works out at the 137GB/128GiB point, so I wouldn't bank on the safety of any data stored beyond that point.

There's even more problems with Win98, probably enough to make it not worth the hassle: http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm.

I reckon the best plan would be a cheap PCI IDE card (make sure it's bootable though), plus a copy of Win2000 with SP4 from Ebay. Either that or run Linux (which ignores the BIOS for disk accessing once the OS is loaded), but I'm guessing that's not really an option... :D
 
Excellent link, Nick8571
I'm a little confused - maybe missing something.
aimee24 said:
I'm not sure if your answer indicates in this case, the HDD will most likely be recognized and the 1st 137 GB usable
Click to expand...
From the 48bit LBA.com, about using Seagate's Disk Wizard to format a disk > 137GB in a NON-48bit LBA machine (just one instance mentioned):
Seagate DiscWizard Starter Edition. Seagate's DiscWizard Starter Edition partition utility is DOS based which boots from diskette. In order to partition the hard drive to full capacity the BIOS must support 48-bit LBA. If the BIOS does not support 48-bit LBA, the partition utility will report the maximum capacity of the hard drive as less than 137 GB and you will only be able to create partitions up to that size.
Click to expand...
This seems to say, worst case, that it will format a partition correctly but only up to a partition of 137GB or just under. Now if you'd just bought a 500 GB disk & could only use 137GB, that would sting. But only having 137 out of 160 on a machine like this isn't bad.

So did I totally misinterpret this? Is it not saying that even if the machine is NOT 48bit LBA capable, you'll still have use of the 1st 137GB?
 
Just a thought, but you could try partitioning and formatting the drive on a newer computer so all that is already done when you install the drive, then the old one just might be happy with it
 
boiot into dos and use Fdisk, may work but the bios simply doesnt support larger disks.
 
Thanks oldbrave,
That's an idea. I'm not sure I get the sense from what I've read so far, that it would make a difference. In my first post in the quote from Seagate, I think that was referring to when a HDD had been formatted in a non-48bit LBA machine, w/ a 32 GB limit (or assume also for 137 GB limit), THEN put in a newer 48bit compliant machine.

MrGuvernment (or is that Gubment?), you mean another option of formatting the disk so Win 98se will recognize / use it is to use Fdisk, and partition it to < 137GB (or 32, which ever it turns out to be?). Sure, guess so. Thanks.
 
oldbrave said:
Just a thought, but you could try partitioning and formatting the drive on a newer computer so all that is already done when you install the drive, then the old one just might be happy with it
Click to expand...
That won't work - if the PC's BIOS can't see the full capacity, you'll risk data corruption/loss if you use beyond 128/137GB, even if the disk was partitioned and formatted on a newer computer. :(

aimee24 said:
This seems to say, worst case, that it will format a partition correctly but only up to a partition of 137GB or just under. Now if you'd just bought a 500 GB disk & could only use 137GB, that would sting. But only having 137 out of 160 on a machine like this isn't bad.

So did I totally misinterpret this? Is it not saying that even if the machine is NOT 48bit LBA capable, you'll still have use of the 1st 137GB?
Click to expand...
I *think* that's the correct interpretation, it's admittedly not entirely clear - to make sure, you could create a partition of slightly less than 128GB (as Windows measures GB), and do a full format before installing Win98 - if everything goes OK and the format completes without errors, you should be good to go. Having said that, it's ages since I used Win9x and I can't remember how the version of Fdisk that ships with Win98 handles partitions of that size - I know for instance WinXP won't let you create FAT32 partitions bigger than 32GB unless you use a third-party utility. You could create several smaller partitions up to 128GB, but it's a bit messy.

I'd still feel a bit uneasy if the BIOS wasn't completely happy with the drive - I honestly think for the price of a few $$ it would be worth installing a cheap bootable ATA133 controller card and bypassing the problem altogether (you'd still have to be aware of Win98's own issues if you wanted to use the full capacity of course).
 
You're absolutely right - a PCI card would be the easiest route.
However, if it will recognize / use 127GB, that'd be fine.

Haven't actually bought the drive yet. IF the store has a liberal return policy, buying & experimenting would be OK.

Could use Fdisk, but seems most partitioning / formatting tools included w/ a disk might be easier. I doubt very seriously that she'd want one 127GB (or is it 128?) partition. I'm also thinking that an 80GB disk would avoid this, assuming the capacity limit we face isn't 32GB vs 137. Either way, most of the solutions would be the same.
 
what I would do *if the bios would allow it*
buy the shareware BootIt $35 or so (30 day trial or so)
put it on a cd-r (or floppy if no cdr on that machine)
put the ide on another machine as slave or 2ndry ide, use
Bootit to format it as fat32 c: d: e: ( 4g 31g 110g)
put it in the target machine
install win98(se?) to C:
install BootIt from the floppy or cdr to win98(se)
keep D: as a backup (at boot, the BootIt can image C: to D:)
keep e: as a place for storage or where to install stuff
(D: and E: should be in an extended 141g partition)
.................
not going into details on FreeBSD
...............
some gotchas' if that synopsis is not complete, but I have not
done it in a while. Howto's are on the terabyte-something website.
..............
 
aimee24 said:
I doubt very seriously that she'd want one 127GB (or is it 128?) partition. I'm also thinking that an 80GB disk would avoid this, assuming the capacity limit we face isn't 32GB vs 137. Either way, most of the solutions would be the same.
Click to expand...
I had a quick Google for the 440ZX chipset, and it seems it supports ATA66 drive transfer speeds, so although it's old it's not hopelessly antiquated, and it *should* support >32GB drives (unless the particular manufacturer has crippled the board in some way, which isn't entirely unknown).

But yes, if 80GB (or maybe 120GB) would provide all the capacity she needs it might be a better solution and avoid any problems down the road. :)
 
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