Are you referring to rloew's patch? (For a second I thought you might be referring to some new "abandonware" package circulating about.)
https://archive.org/details/patch1tb

I think realistically you are probably never going to get around to looking at more than a tiny fraction of a 1 TB drive containing all your games and apps. I also think you're probably going to run into some kind of problem or another eventually, particularly considering that FAT32 is, at least in theory, susceptible to corruption and does not perform as well on larger drives compared to some alternatives. There are certainly installers that were never written with the expectation of having anywhere near that amount of free space available.

My thought is that you could keep things installed on a more realistically-sized partition, and then store stuff on an ext3 or NTFS drive from which you could copy things as necessary. But that's just my opinion.

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 00:34:

Greetings, […]
Show full quote

Greetings,

I am looking for information on using 1 terabyte hard drives with Windows 98SE/DOS 7.1 with a Pentium III on an Asus P2B board, using the Terabyte Plus package. I am reading the readme files, though I just want to make sure I do things right. I read elsewhere that there could be issues, even with the terabyte plus package.

The idea is that I would like to install EVERYTHING on my 1980-2000 box, and have a slave 1tb drive containing disc images for all of my games and apps which I would mount, in order to keep my discs in their boxes and avoid swapping. My original idea was to have a series of CF cards and use CF-IDE adapters, but that would be inconvenient and they could get lost. I have SATA-to-IDE adapters for the drives. Right now, DOS and Windows are installed on a CF card, though I want a master 1TB and a slave 1TB when this is all set up.

Does anyone have any experience with Terabyte Plus and/or with what I'm trying to do?

Many thanks!

Scythifuge

In addition to the TBPlus package or anything similar in function (such as BHDD31.ZIP), you must have an LBA48 (48-bit LBA) capable disk controller BIOS, either integrated on the motherboard (if using the onboard IDE controller) or on an add-in IDE or SATA PCI controller (if using one of those). As an alternative to that, you may be able to use the Bootman2 disk overlay package included with the Terabyte Plus package .

That said, in theory, it should work .

I use the BHDD31.ZIP package on one Windows 98 SE machine with a an Asus P3B-F and 1 TB SATA hard drive running off a SIL3114 SATA controller (with 48-bit LBA support) and it works fine . All the partitions on the drive are 120GB or less, because, AFAIK, BHDD31.ZIP does not bypass Windows 98 SE's partition size limitation .

Jorpho wrote on 2021-03-02, 00:51:

Are you referring to rloew's patch? (For a second I thought you might be referring to some new "abandonware" package circulating […]
Show full quote

Are you referring to rloew's patch? (For a second I thought you might be referring to some new "abandonware" package circulating about.)
https://archive.org/details/patch1tb

I think realistically you are probably never going to get around to looking at more than a tiny fraction of a 1 TB drive containing all your games and apps. I also think you're probably going to run into some kind of problem or another eventually, particularly considering that FAT32 is, at least in theory, susceptible to corruption and does not perform as well on larger drives compared to some alternatives. There are certainly installers that were never written with the expectation of having anywhere near that amount of free space available.

My thought is that you could keep things installed on a more realistically-sized partition, and then store stuff on an ext3 or NTFS drive from which you could copy things as necessary. But that's just my opinion.

It is rloew's package. I also downloaded all of his other patches after I came across his stuff while seeking answers to my conundrum.

I see what you are saying about the installs, so maybe I will stick with the 128 SD-to-CF-to-IDE set up that I have for my C drive, and try to mess around getting a 1tb set up just for storage of disc images (every cd and early dvd game and application I own that runs on Windows 98SE with a Voodoo3.) I will also put my mp3 collection and all of my drivers for the system on the drive. In that way, I won't be accessing it very much and seeking only to mount images in DOS and in Windows, which may help prevent corruption.

His patches claim to allow the use of 3+ TB drives. Basically, I just want everything from those two decades on it for ease of use. I also considered making a bunch of partitions. Whichever is the best course of action, whether I can use rloews patches for some other solution. There is an rfdisk folder, rformat folder, and some other things in the package, plus his other patches as well.

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:02:

In addition to the TBPlus package or anything similar in function (such as BHDD31.ZIP), you must have an LBA48 (48-bit LBA) capa […]
Show full quote

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 00:34:

Greetings, […]
Show full quote

Greetings,

I am looking for information on using 1 terabyte hard drives with Windows 98SE/DOS 7.1 with a Pentium III on an Asus P2B board, using the Terabyte Plus package. I am reading the readme files, though I just want to make sure I do things right. I read elsewhere that there could be issues, even with the terabyte plus package.

The idea is that I would like to install EVERYTHING on my 1980-2000 box, and have a slave 1tb drive containing disc images for all of my games and apps which I would mount, in order to keep my discs in their boxes and avoid swapping. My original idea was to have a series of CF cards and use CF-IDE adapters, but that would be inconvenient and they could get lost. I have SATA-to-IDE adapters for the drives. Right now, DOS and Windows are installed on a CF card, though I want a master 1TB and a slave 1TB when this is all set up.

Does anyone have any experience with Terabyte Plus and/or with what I'm trying to do?

Many thanks!

Scythifuge

In addition to the TBPlus package or anything similar in function (such as BHDD31.ZIP), you must have an LBA48 (48-bit LBA) capable disk controller BIOS, either integrated on the motherboard (if using the onboard IDE controller) or on an add-in IDE or SATA PCI controller (if using one of those). As an alternative to that, you may be able to use the Bootman2 disk overlay package included with the Terabyte Plus package .

That said, in theory, it should work .

I use the BHDD31.ZIP package on one Windows 98 SE machine with a an Asus P3B-F and 1 TB SATA hard drive running off a SIL3114 SATA controller (with 48-bit LBA support) and it works fine . All the partitions on the drive are 120GB or less, because, AFAIK, BHDD31.ZIP does not bypass Windows 98 SE's partition size limitation .

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:12:

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:02:

In addition to the TBPlus package or anything similar in function (such as BHDD31.ZIP), you must have an LBA48 (48-bit LBA) capa […]
Show full quote

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 00:34:

Greetings, […]
Show full quote

Greetings,

I am looking for information on using 1 terabyte hard drives with Windows 98SE/DOS 7.1 with a Pentium III on an Asus P2B board, using the Terabyte Plus package. I am reading the readme files, though I just want to make sure I do things right. I read elsewhere that there could be issues, even with the terabyte plus package.

The idea is that I would like to install EVERYTHING on my 1980-2000 box, and have a slave 1tb drive containing disc images for all of my games and apps which I would mount, in order to keep my discs in their boxes and avoid swapping. My original idea was to have a series of CF cards and use CF-IDE adapters, but that would be inconvenient and they could get lost. I have SATA-to-IDE adapters for the drives. Right now, DOS and Windows are installed on a CF card, though I want a master 1TB and a slave 1TB when this is all set up.

Does anyone have any experience with Terabyte Plus and/or with what I'm trying to do?

Many thanks!

Scythifuge

In addition to the TBPlus package or anything similar in function (such as BHDD31.ZIP), you must have an LBA48 (48-bit LBA) capable disk controller BIOS, either integrated on the motherboard (if using the onboard IDE controller) or on an add-in IDE or SATA PCI controller (if using one of those). As an alternative to that, you may be able to use the Bootman2 disk overlay package included with the Terabyte Plus package .

That said, in theory, it should work .

I use the BHDD31.ZIP package on one Windows 98 SE machine with a an Asus P3B-F and 1 TB SATA hard drive running off a SIL3114 SATA controller (with 48-bit LBA support) and it works fine . All the partitions on the drive are 120GB or less, because, AFAIK, BHDD31.ZIP does not bypass Windows 98 SE's partition size limitation .

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

Don't use Windows 98 SE's fdisk . Use the one provided in the package .

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:30:

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:12:

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:02:

In addition to the TBPlus package or anything similar in function (such as BHDD31.ZIP), you must have an LBA48 (48-bit LBA) capable disk controller BIOS, either integrated on the motherboard (if using the onboard IDE controller) or on an add-in IDE or SATA PCI controller (if using one of those). As an alternative to that, you may be able to use the Bootman2 disk overlay package included with the Terabyte Plus package .

That said, in theory, it should work .

I use the BHDD31.ZIP package on one Windows 98 SE machine with a an Asus P3B-F and 1 TB SATA hard drive running off a SIL3114 SATA controller (with 48-bit LBA support) and it works fine . All the partitions on the drive are 120GB or less, because, AFAIK, BHDD31.ZIP does not bypass Windows 98 SE's partition size limitation .

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

Don't use Windows 98 SE's fdisk . Use the one provided in the package .

Agreed. I used fdisk simply to test the overlay, and now I am reading the manual.txt and trying to figure out how rfdisk works, hehehe.

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:02:

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:30:

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:12:

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

Don't use Windows 98 SE's fdisk . Use the one provided in the package .

Agreed. I used fdisk simply to test the overlay, and now I am reading the manual.txt and trying to figure out how rfdisk works, hehehe.

I think I tried RFDISK once and, TBH, I found it confusing, AFAICR . I tend to prefer using a Linux boot CD (typically Lubuntu) and using its fdisk command to do my partitioning . I had some weird issues with FreeDOS' FDISK related to running rloew's DOS TRIM utility, so I avoid that version of FDISK, even when dealing with spinning drives, just in case .

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:11:

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:02:

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:30:

Don't use Windows 98 SE's fdisk . Use the one provided in the package .

Agreed. I used fdisk simply to test the overlay, and now I am reading the manual.txt and trying to figure out how rfdisk works, hehehe.

I think I tried RFDISK once and, TBH, I found it confusing, AFAICR . I tend to prefer using a Linux boot CD (typically Lubuntu) and using its fdisk command to do my partitioning . I had some weird issues with FreeDOS' FDISK related to running rloew's DOS TRIM utility, so I avoid that version of FDISK, even when dealing with spinning drives, just in case .

I can't figure out how to select the 1tb drive, and I am afraid of accidentally messing up the SD/CF card by selecting the wrong options. Maybe I will buy another 128GB SD card with CF adapter and use my dual CF to IDE adapter to at least start copying ISOs and see where I'm at while I try to research rloew's programs a bit more. I am realizing that having two 1tb drives in this system will be overkill, even with my MP3 and app collections. I know that all of my DOS games do not exceed 4GB installed, and I don't know the total size of all optical discs I have. It may exceed 128GB, though it may not. Some of these games have a lot of disks, like Wing Commander III and IV and Phantasmagoria. The games and apps will cover the entire DOS era, Windows 3.x, and Windows 98 with a Voodoo3 card, as I know that there are some Win 3.x drivers that work with it.

Put it in a modern PC and make eight 128gb partitions. Format each to FAT 32. Load up windows 98, go down to DOS with CDROM support, copy the contents of the win98 folder from CD drive to the C: drive, and run the setup. You might also need to reset the boot record and set one of the drives are the primary partition in fdisk. Shouldn't be too much fuss.

If you need a good disk controller, look at the promise PCI cards. I have used one of their dual SATA 1.5 cards on a slot 1 board without issue, albeit only with smaller drives.

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:24:

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:11:

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:02:

Agreed. I used fdisk simply to test the overlay, and now I am reading the manual.txt and trying to figure out how rfdisk works, hehehe.

I think I tried RFDISK once and, TBH, I found it confusing, AFAICR . I tend to prefer using a Linux boot CD (typically Lubuntu) and using its fdisk command to do my partitioning . I had some weird issues with FreeDOS' FDISK related to running rloew's DOS TRIM utility, so I avoid that version of FDISK, even when dealing with spinning drives, just in case .

I can't figure out how to select the 1tb drive, and I am afraid of accidentally messing up the SD/CF card by selecting the wrong options. Maybe I will buy another 128GB SD card with CF adapter and use my dual CF to IDE adapter to at least start copying ISOs and see where I'm at while I try to research rloew's programs a bit more. I am realizing that having two 1tb drives in this system will be overkill, even with my MP3 and app collections. I know that all of my DOS games do not exceed 4GB installed, and I don't know the total size of all optical discs I have. It may exceed 128GB, though it may not. Some of these games have a lot of disks, like Wing Commander III and IV and Phantasmagoria. The games and apps will cover the entire DOS era, Windows 3.x, and Windows 98 with a Voodoo3 card, as I know that there are some Win 3.x drivers that work with it.

TBH, my Windows 98 SE machine with the 1 TB drive is a testbed and only has that drive because that's what I had laying around . The retro machine that I sue most has Windows 98 SE and BHDD31.ZIP on an integrated ICH2 controller (also with LBA48 BIOS support) and a 500GB Samsung 860EVO SSD (120GB partitions) and even that is a lot of free space for Windows 9x . I keep my music collection and disk images on a NAS, which reduces my local storage needs considerably .

IMHO, having multiple CF cards is a fine approach too .

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:33:

Put it in a modern PC and make eight 128gb partitions. Format each to FAT 32. Load up windows 98, go down to DOS with CDROM support, copy the contents of the win98 folder from CD drive to the C: drive, and run the setup. You might also need to reset the boot record and set one of the drives are the primary partition in fdisk. Shouldn't be too much fuss.

If you need a good disk controller, look at the promise PCI cards. I have used one of their dual SATA 1.5 cards on a slot 1 board without issue, albeit only with smaller drives.

I was trying to avoid all of the partitions ands drive letters, but I may have to go this route if I can't figure out how to use The TBPLus package. I thought about adding a SATA card, though I only have enough space to add a 2nd Voodoo2 and a Voodoo 4mb (so that all glide games run properly.) I have am AWE32 and an SCC-1 in the ISA slots, and a SB Live! card in there for Windows 98, so I have to either figure out TBPlus, do the multiple partitions, or just go with two 128GB CF cards and hope that I can fit most, if not all of my ISOs. The latest games I would probably run are games like Revenant, Urban Chaos, Hidden & Dangerous and the like, and they were single CD games. I could also go with the multiple CF card idea. I can put a 5.25 drawer in the 3rd 5.25 external bay and keep the cards in there, and use a 3.5 CF adapter port.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:33:

Put it in a modern PC and make eight 128gb partitions. Format each to FAT 32. Load up windows 98, go down to DOS with CDROM support, copy the contents of the win98 folder from CD drive to the C: drive, and run the setup. You might also need to reset the boot record and set one of the drives are the primary partition in fdisk. Shouldn't be too much fuss.

If you need a good disk controller, look at the promise PCI cards. I have used one of their dual SATA 1.5 cards on a slot 1 board without issue, albeit only with smaller drives.

Partitioning in a modern machine is a good option .

As for disk controllers, even Promise IDE controllers can be a good option in conjunction with a good quality Jmicron IDE to SATA adapter . The Ultra133 TX2, for example, has LBA48 support, Windows 98 SE drivers and great performance, but, for some reason won't POST in my Asus P3B-F (works fine in other boards). Be careful with Promise SATA controllers as not all of them have Window 9x driver support . Unfortunately, suitable Promise controllers are getting a bit expensive .

Another PCI controller option for Windows 98 SE is the SIL3114 . Cards based on it are cheap and plentiful, the latest non-RAID BIOSes support LBA48 and Windows 98 SE driver support is good . Unfortunately, there are crappy ones on the market with non-flashable BIOS chips and/or weird stability/compatibility issues . If you can get a good one, you should be fine too .

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:38:

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:24:

darry wrote on 2021-03-02, 02:11:

I think I tried RFDISK once and, TBH, I found it confusing, AFAICR . I tend to prefer using a Linux boot CD (typically Lubuntu) and using its fdisk command to do my partitioning . I had some weird issues with FreeDOS' FDISK related to running rloew's DOS TRIM utility, so I avoid that version of FDISK, even when dealing with spinning drives, just in case .

I can't figure out how to select the 1tb drive, and I am afraid of accidentally messing up the SD/CF card by selecting the wrong options. Maybe I will buy another 128GB SD card with CF adapter and use my dual CF to IDE adapter to at least start copying ISOs and see where I'm at while I try to research rloew's programs a bit more. I am realizing that having two 1tb drives in this system will be overkill, even with my MP3 and app collections. I know that all of my DOS games do not exceed 4GB installed, and I don't know the total size of all optical discs I have. It may exceed 128GB, though it may not. Some of these games have a lot of disks, like Wing Commander III and IV and Phantasmagoria. The games and apps will cover the entire DOS era, Windows 3.x, and Windows 98 with a Voodoo3 card, as I know that there are some Win 3.x drivers that work with it.

TBH, my Windows 98 SE machine with the 1 TB drive is a testbed and only has that drive because that's what I had laying around . The retro machine that I sue most has Windows 98 SE and BHDD31.ZIP on an integrated ICH2 controller (also with LBA48 BIOS support) and a 500GB Samsung 860EVO SSD (120GB partitions) and even that is a lot of free space for Windows 9x . I keep my music collection and disk images on a NAS, which reduces my local storage needs considerably .

IMHO, having multiple CF cards is a fine approach too .

The idea to store everything came about because I have some old 1 TB drives laying around from a previous build. I'm checking 128GB SD card and CF card prices. I can get the SD-to-CF adapter for a few bucks.

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:12:

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no problems with corruption (periodically I check integrity of files over 128GB with hashes). Easier than creating a lot of partitions on the same drive.
SSD or HD makes no difference. First I always partition a new Fat32 dos/win98 drive with Win 10 using diskpart. This to ensure starting sector of 2048 = 1MIB / 4k alignment. A single 2TB partition.
Diskpart has the artificial MS limit of not being able to format fat32 drives over 32GB so I take the drive out, put it in the DOS/Win98 machine and use the Winme format.com or now the newer Oformat.com (from Deploy.cab in Windows XP Service Pack 3). Oformat is an update from the winme dos8 format for quicker deployment in an OEM environment.

That is all that is needed for DOS 7.1 and 8. Of course motherboard bios or pci-controller needs to support LBA48bit to use full 2TB.

With Win98/ME the only additional step is to download Enable48BitLBA and before booting to win98 copy over updated ESDI_506.PDR file in the package to Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. I copy this update over even when using disks that are smaller than 128GB just as a good practice in case I use a larger disk in the future. ESDI_506.PDR is only used
when using the onboard IDE controller on the motherboard. Add on PCI controller cards will have their own drivers and need to support 48bit LBA. Only other point is never use scandisk, even the newest winme/dos8 version to check the drive. I just take out the drive, put it in a usb caddy and check with chkdsk in win10 around twice a year. No errors so far in over 2 years.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2021-03-03, 16:54:

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no p […]
Show full quote

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:12:

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no problems with corruption (periodically I check integrity of files over 128GB with hashes). Easier than creating a lot of partitions on the same drive.
SSD or HD makes no difference. First I always partition a new Fat32 dos/win98 drive with Win 10 using diskpart. This to ensure starting sector of 2048 = 1MIB / 4k alignment. A single 2TB partition.
Diskpart has the artificial MS limit of not being able to format fat32 drives over 32GB so I take the drive out, put it in the DOS/Win98 machine and use the Winme format.com or now the newer Oformat.com (from Deploy.cab in Windows XP Service Pack 3). Oformat is an update from the winme dos8 format for quicker deployment in an OEM environment.

That is all that is needed for DOS 7.1 and 8. Of course motherboard bios or pci-controller needs to support LBA48bit to use full 2TB.

With Win98/ME the only additional step is to download Enable48BitLBA and before booting to win98 copy over updated ESDI_506.PDR file in the package to Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. I copy this update over even when using disks that are smaller than 128GB just as a good practice in case I use a larger disk in the future. ESDI_506.PDR is only used
when using the onboard IDE controller on the motherboard. Add on PCI controller cards will have their own drivers and need to support 48bit LBA. Only other point is never use scandisk, even the newest winme/dos8 version to check the drive. I just take out the drive, put it in a usb caddy and check with chkdsk in win10 around twice a year. No errors so far in over 2 years.

This gives me hope that I can get this working. I a, going to reread the rloew files to see if they work around a lack of 48 bit LBA or if I have to buy a controller card. The issues is that I have no room for one in the box (the remaining slots are reserved for future Voodoo card purchases.) That your 2TB drive is 82% full makes me worried that even if I can get these 1TB drives I have to work in this Asus P2B system, they may not provide enough space for my entire software library. I did order an external IDE/SATA enclosure to play with that as a USB drive solution, though I am hoping to get these drives installed and working.

Someone in another thread told me that I may have issues running a Voodoo1, two Voodoo2s, and a Voodoo5 in the same box, though I have read elsewhere that people have a similar set up in order to properly run all Glide games across the entire 3dfx era. If necessary, I may sacrifice either the V1 or one of the V2s I have planned, and install a PCI SATA controller and then try the TBPlus package again.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2021-03-03, 16:54:

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no p […]
Show full quote

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:12:

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no problems with corruption (periodically I check integrity of files over 128GB with hashes). Easier than creating a lot of partitions on the same drive.
SSD or HD makes no difference. First I always partition a new Fat32 dos/win98 drive with Win 10 using diskpart. This to ensure starting sector of 2048 = 1MIB / 4k alignment. A single 2TB partition.
Diskpart has the artificial MS limit of not being able to format fat32 drives over 32GB so I take the drive out, put it in the DOS/Win98 machine and use the Winme format.com or now the newer Oformat.com (from Deploy.cab in Windows XP Service Pack 3). Oformat is an update from the winme dos8 format for quicker deployment in an OEM environment.

That is all that is needed for DOS 7.1 and 8. Of course motherboard bios or pci-controller needs to support LBA48bit to use full 2TB.

With Win98/ME the only additional step is to download Enable48BitLBA and before booting to win98 copy over updated ESDI_506.PDR file in the package to Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. I copy this update over even when using disks that are smaller than 128GB just as a good practice in case I use a larger disk in the future. ESDI_506.PDR is only used
when using the onboard IDE controller on the motherboard. Add on PCI controller cards will have their own drivers and need to support 48bit LBA. Only other point is never use scandisk, even the newest winme/dos8 version to check the drive. I just take out the drive, put it in a usb caddy and check with chkdsk in win10 around twice a year. No errors so far in over 2 years.

Most of your experience seems to mostly mirror mine in regards to large disks in Windows 98 SE .

The only significant potential issues/points I see are :

a) using partitions greater than 127GB in Windows without some kind of specific patch (or maybe you are and I missed or misunderstood that, AFAIK both PATCTH1TB and 1TBPLUS address the max partition size issue). I never bothered on that front, because I find multiple 127GB partitions suit my needs just fine .

b) You mention 128GB files . FAT32 being limited to 4GB files, I don't see how you are managing that .

darry wrote on 2021-03-04, 08:51:

Most of your experience seems to mostly mirror mine in regards to large disks in Windows 98 SE . […]
Show full quote

Riikcakirds wrote on 2021-03-03, 16:54:

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no p […]
Show full quote

Scythifuge wrote on 2021-03-02, 01:12:

I installed rloew's overlay and it allows fdisk to see the drive, but only up to so many gigs. I am trying to figure out how to use his other files to try to get the full 1tb.

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no problems with corruption (periodically I check integrity of files over 128GB with hashes). Easier than creating a lot of partitions on the same drive.
SSD or HD makes no difference. First I always partition a new Fat32 dos/win98 drive with Win 10 using diskpart. This to ensure starting sector of 2048 = 1MIB / 4k alignment. A single 2TB partition.
Diskpart has the artificial MS limit of not being able to format fat32 drives over 32GB so I take the drive out, put it in the DOS/Win98 machine and use the Winme format.com or now the newer Oformat.com (from Deploy.cab in Windows XP Service Pack 3). Oformat is an update from the winme dos8 format for quicker deployment in an OEM environment.

That is all that is needed for DOS 7.1 and 8. Of course motherboard bios or pci-controller needs to support LBA48bit to use full 2TB.

With Win98/ME the only additional step is to download Enable48BitLBA and before booting to win98 copy over updated ESDI_506.PDR file in the package to Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. I copy this update over even when using disks that are smaller than 128GB just as a good practice in case I use a larger disk in the future. ESDI_506.PDR is only used
when using the onboard IDE controller on the motherboard. Add on PCI controller cards will have their own drivers and need to support 48bit LBA. Only other point is never use scandisk, even the newest winme/dos8 version to check the drive. I just take out the drive, put it in a usb caddy and check with chkdsk in win10 around twice a year. No errors so far in over 2 years.

Most of your experience seems to mostly mirror mine in regards to large disks in Windows 98 SE .

The only significant potential issues/points I see are :

a) using partitions greater than 127GB in Windows without some kind of specific patch (or maybe you are and I missed or misunderstood that, AFAIK both PATCTH1TB and 1TBPLUS address the max partition size issue). I never bothered on that front, because I find multiple 127GB partitions suit my needs just fine .

b) You mention 128GB files . FAT32 being limited to 4GB files, I don't see how you are managing that .

I should have phrased that better when I said 128GB. What i meant is files that reside above the 128GB mark of the 2TB partition have not become corrupted after 2 years of usage in Win98 or booting to it's versions of DOS.

About point a) you mention above, I haven't installed any type of patch like PATCTH1TB and 1TBPLUS. Just a clean install of Win98se and then the final original 98SE SP 2.1a (from november 2005). I thought win98 only had problems creating partitions larger than 128GB? Everything has been working fine so far without PATCTH1TB and 1TBPLUS.

Riikcakirds wrote on 2021-03-04, 16:25:

darry wrote on 2021-03-04, 08:51:

Most of your experience seems to mostly mirror mine in regards to large disks in Windows 98 SE . […]
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Riikcakirds wrote on 2021-03-03, 16:54:

I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no p […]
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I've been using a 2TB drive for win98/ME since 2018, drive is 82% full, mainly ISO files of games I own over the years and no problems with corruption (periodically I check integrity of files over 128GB with hashes). Easier than creating a lot of partitions on the same drive.
SSD or HD makes no difference. First I always partition a new Fat32 dos/win98 drive with Win 10 using diskpart. This to ensure starting sector of 2048 = 1MIB / 4k alignment. A single 2TB partition.
Diskpart has the artificial MS limit of not being able to format fat32 drives over 32GB so I take the drive out, put it in the DOS/Win98 machine and use the Winme format.com or now the newer Oformat.com (from Deploy.cab in Windows XP Service Pack 3). Oformat is an update from the winme dos8 format for quicker deployment in an OEM environment.

That is all that is needed for DOS 7.1 and 8. Of course motherboard bios or pci-controller needs to support LBA48bit to use full 2TB.

With Win98/ME the only additional step is to download Enable48BitLBA and before booting to win98 copy over updated ESDI_506.PDR file in the package to Windows\System\Iosubsys directory. I copy this update over even when using disks that are smaller than 128GB just as a good practice in case I use a larger disk in the future. ESDI_506.PDR is only used
when using the onboard IDE controller on the motherboard. Add on PCI controller cards will have their own drivers and need to support 48bit LBA. Only other point is never use scandisk, even the newest winme/dos8 version to check the drive. I just take out the drive, put it in a usb caddy and check with chkdsk in win10 around twice a year. No errors so far in over 2 years.

Most of your experience seems to mostly mirror mine in regards to large disks in Windows 98 SE .

The only significant potential issues/points I see are :

a) using partitions greater than 127GB in Windows without some kind of specific patch (or maybe you are and I missed or misunderstood that, AFAIK both PATCTH1TB and 1TBPLUS address the max partition size issue). I never bothered on that front, because I find multiple 127GB partitions suit my needs just fine .

b) You mention 128GB files . FAT32 being limited to 4GB files, I don't see how you are managing that .

I should have phrased that better when I said 128GB. What i meant is files that reside above the 128GB mark of the 2TB partition have not become corrupted after 2 years of usage in Win98 or booting to it's versions of DOS.

About point a) you mention above, I haven't installed any type of patch like PATCTH1TB and 1TBPLUS. Just a clean install of Win98se and then the final original 98SE SP 2.1a (from november 2005). I thought win98 only had problems creating partitions larger than 128GB? Everything has been working fine so far without PATCTH1TB and 1TBPLUS.

Thank you for clearing that up . I never really bothered checking the details of the 127GB partition size issue . I am curious now and will look into it, even if I have no personal use for it . Maybe SP 2.1A includes a patch for that ?