Win98 SE Trouble Formatting? Read this \ VOGONS

Win98 SE Trouble Formatting? Read this

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First post, by tobiasrieper

Posted on 2023-08-25, 20:20

tobiasrieper Offline

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Not sure if it has been covered before but I always have an absolute nightmare formatting the hdd in the Windows 98 setup environment. It often hangs and only if I'm lucky will it fully format it.

What I do everytime now is use an IDE - USb adapter, plug it into my windows 10 laptop and format using Disk Manager.
Fat32 -Quick Format. I don't assign the drive a letter and I mark the partition active. I have wasted hours of my life watching win98 try and format my disks..
Hope this helps someone.

Reply 1 of 3, by dormcat

Posted on 2023-08-25, 20:29

dormcat Offline

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Windows 10 (or any Windows with NT 6 kernel) would add hidden components like System Volume Information folder onto your HDD. IMHO use Windows XP (NT 5.1) instead if you need to manipulate a Win9x HDD on a (semi-)modern computer.

And what's the capacity of your HDD with trouble formatting?

Reply 2 of 3, by tobiasrieper

Posted on 2023-08-25, 23:30

tobiasrieper Offline

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Joined: 2023-07-26, 14:49

dormcat wrote on 2023-08-25, 20:29:

Windows 10 (or any Windows with NT 6 kernel) would add hidden components like System Volume Information folder onto your HDD. IMHO use Windows XP (NT 5.1) instead if you need to manipulate a Win9x HDD on a (semi-)modern computer.

And what's the capacity of your HDD with trouble formatting?

That's what I thought but, I have no issues so far with this method. I have a feeling it maybe because I am not using the boot floppy to format? May have something to do with it. No idea. One is 10gb the other is 80gb. For the 80gb I've changed the size to 32gb. The 80gb is brand new, old school IDE.

Reply 3 of 3, by Gmlb256

Posted on 2023-08-27, 16:31

Gmlb256 Offline

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There is an updated FDISK that should work properly with HDD that has more than 64GB in capacity, search for 263044usa8.exe or the equivalent depending on the language.

Any FAT32 partition equal or smaller than 64GB should work without issues with the FDISK included with the Windows 98 SE CD-ROM or boot disk.

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