2) Don't know exactly about ontrack, but EzDrive has a small sys file you can load to free up all the conventional memory it otherwise consumes. (OnTrack consumes ~10kB, EzDrive consumes ~5kB - with loading that sys file, it's 0kB for EzDrive)

I was able to answer some of my own questions:

(1) From some YT videos of OnTrack 10.x, it appears to support newer operating systems e.g. XP along with the NTFS file system. There is a GUI that doesn't seem to add value. I'd be interested to know if there are any other capabilities worth mentioning or if, as I suspect, OnTrack 9.x is perfectly fine for a DOS/W311/95/98 system.

(2) I gathered from some information online that OnTrack v6.x onward supported 32-bit disk access under Windows 98 without any special driver needing to be installed. Great!

Still unsure what to do about (3) but I'm ready to give up... I can always boot setup/diag off floppy when I need it.

Swiego wrote on 2020-04-24, 03:22:

I had some ontrack disk manager questions I could not easily sort out myself; hope someone can help. […]
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I had some ontrack disk manager questions I could not easily sort out myself; hope someone can help.

1) in general, what is the difference between the v9.57 and v10.x versions? When to use one over the other?

2) once installed, do any drivers need to be installed in either w3.11, 95 or 98 to enable 32 bit access, max performance etc?

3) any suggestions when trying to pair an ODD like OnTrack with computers that used a diagnostic partition for their setup? I have two Compaqs that do so and for the life of me cannot figure out the order to use to have both the diag partition and also a working ODD that enables large disks. Each installer seems to kill the other’s setup.

1. Generally you should avoid v10.x, specially in older machines were DDO would be required. v10.x comes as a PartitionMagic-like GUI dos app, but it is pretty limited, and almost useless in older machines were you would like to use stuff like "true" low level format and mfm/rll disk configuration. Stick with v9.57

2. OntrackW.386 is only required for win3x and win95 rtm (floppy based install) if you want to use 32bit disk access. Check it would or wouldn't work with external controllers which have their own BIOS, as some IDE and almost all SCSI cards.

3. You can try disabling Ontrack protection-aware partition table format when preparing your disk to use DDO. Ontrack floppies come with an online manual which tells you the switches you have to pass the app in order to enable or disable certain features, like disabling ontrack format or relocating DDO when a memory manager is available.