No wonder. Your post is confusing.

98 SE is limited to 128GB unless you install the 48bit LBA patch.

The 32gb limitation is only for 2000+ when you use them to create FAT32 partitions. MS-DOS 7 fdisk can create FAT32 > 32gb partitions.

I wouldn't create huge partitions on FAT32 anyway for 9x since there isn't much point.

Create a partition size for the amount of data you need. Store everything else on a server on your network.

DosFreak wrote:

98 SE is limited to 128GB unless you install the 48bit LBA patch.

It's a bit worse, actually. Windows 98 detects hard drives larger than 128 GB with no problems, but it will corrupt data when writing to them. Also, there is no official LBA48 patch and the third party patches are either not stable or not free.

I'm cloning the original HDD:
So I could buy a 128GB SSD(+SATA->IDE converter) and no need to any disk partitions on Win98SE ?
(- Why some forums if I remember correctly writes that Win98 must have 30gb\32gb partitions ?)

Which size SSD is more compatible with Win98 ?
- 128gb ?
or
- 32gb ?

Yup if you use a drive < 128GB then no issues.
Greater than then you need to use the patch.

I wouldn't recommend one large partition like that but if that's what you want to do then sure.

As for the forums most people don't know what they are talking about.

Win95 doesn't officially support partitions larger than 32GB, I have found that you cannot set swapfile size if the partition is larger than 32GB, there seems to be a 16bit integer overflow and you get negative values that error out things 🤣, also 32bit file access gets disabled by default. No such problems with 98, 98SE or ME. 128GB is the next limit and you need the LBA48 patch to overcome that (which still seems to play nice with old CHS based drives, I never experienced data corruption). You'll need FDISK, SCANDISK and DEFRAG from ME to play nice also or there will be errors or data corruption.

I'm with DosFreak in this case, the post is a bit difficult to understand (it can be misunterstand at some point).

I suppose you meant to say:

user33331 wrote:

Hello ( Win98SE + Laptop BIOS support for max.HDD is 128gb.)

-> Hello, I've got a Laptop with Win98SE. It has BIOS support for HDDs up to 128GB in size.

user33331 wrote:

So if I buy a bigger HDD\SSD upgrade to a 3.0gb HDD PATA\IDE which has Win98SE...

-> So if I buy a bigger HDD or SDD as an upgrade for my exiting 3.0GB HDD, which has Win98SE installed on..

user33331 wrote:

The easiest way is to buy a 32gb HDD\SSD ? (or if bigger gb size I must partition it to max.32gb partitions ?)

-> ..would the easist way be to buy a 32GB HDD or SSD ?
-> And if the new HDD or SSD is bigger in size (capacity in GB), must I (re-)partition it to a maximum partition size of 32GB ?

Anyway, this is by no means a correction of your writing. I just wrote it down the way I understood your post.
Hope it is correct that way. 😅

user33331 wrote:

Just clone the 3.0gb drive to the ->32gb drive and so on...? (Without any partitioning with bigger drives.)

Some backup programs can clone the content of one drive to another. Acronis True Image, for example, can do that.
These backup programs take care of everything (Volume ID, parition size, etc.).

Yes ok. My english is so-so...*hand gesture* (I'm being forced to talk finnish in Finland)
Can I clone the HDD to ->SSD and afterwards partition the SSD ?
If any problems might occur if without partitioning ?

You can clone your drive or just fdisk and format the new drive, run a sys c: and copy everything over.

If you clone the drive then you'll need to use 3rd party tools to expand the partition after (depending on the tool you used, some can offer to expand the parition) or you can use fdisk to create more partitions.

I'm using a Win7 desktop computer to clone the Win98SE HDD to SSD.( Because the laptop fits only 1pc HDD )
I have a Corsair cloning kit: usb to sata, EZ Gig IV. Never used partitions on EZ Gig IV ?
( If needed I can use IDE->SATA and SATA->IDE adapters.)

derSammler wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

98 SE is limited to 128GB unless you install the 48bit LBA patch.

It's a bit worse, actually. Windows 98 detects hard drives larger than 128 GB with no problems, but it will corrupt data when writing to them.

I believe you can just create partition(s) smaller than 128 GB in total and use only that, ignoring the rest of the disk. Windows won't try to write data on unallocated disk space, so you should be good. YMMV.

As for the supposed 32 GB limit for FAT32, Microsoft at some point (2K? XP?) made a decision to limit FAT32 creation/formatting to 32 GB, probably to encourage people to use NTFS for bigger partitions.
Windows 10 will happily detect and use FAT32 partitions bigger than that (the largest I've used was 120GB, so I don't know if 128GB limit applies here), but you need 98/Me/3rd party tool to create FAT32 filesystems bigger than 32 GB.