So I recently put Western Digital's version of EZ-Drive version 9.03W through it's paces and I really wanted to check out Seagate's equivalent.

While Western Digital went with EZ-Drive, Seagate teamed up with Kroll Ontrack and licensed a version of the famous Ontrack Disk Manager.

As always, I have a video! This time I'm using my new AVerMedia Game Capture HD II + StarTech VGA to HDMI scaler. The AVerMedia has a microphone input so I used that with a desk microphone making it easy to record the entire thing in one hit:

Seagate DiscWizard 10.45 Dynamic Drive Overlay Review Tutorial

For those who prefer a write up, here it goes:

You can download it from here: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/seagate1.html

By the way, what's the go with disc vs disk? 🤣

Just like with EZ-Drive I tried various storage devices:

• 80 GB Seagate IDE
• 20 GB Western Digital IDE
• 32 GB Compact Flash

The software worked with the Seagate drive and the Compact Flash drive but wouldn't work with the Western Digital drive:

And also like in with EZ-Drive I wanted to achieve the following:

• Install MS-DOS 6.22 on a single 2 GB partition
• Create another three 2 GB partitions for a total of four 2 GB partitions with MS-DOS 6.22
• Because Ontrack also supports FAT32 (EZ-Drive does not), I also wanted a single 80 GB FAT32 partition and install Windows 98 SE

PC was the same, an Acer 486 with a 504 MiB BIOS hard drive limit. I started with a 486DX-33 but Windows 98SE told me it needs at least 66 MHz so I ended up continuing with an IntelDX4 Overdrive.

Compatibility issues

I tried at first with 4, 8 and 12 MB of RAM, all of which failed. This, quite late, version of Ontrack needs 16 MB of RAM to launch!

There was another issue with the high resolution graphics mode. It wouldn't run on an ISA Tseng ET4000AX, so I switched to one with a WD chipset. Later I found out that if you quit Disk Manager and launch it manually again it would work. There are also command line options mentioned inside Disk Manager, but I didn't study them in detail. Likely there are tweaks to be done but I was testing out-of-the box functionality more than anything.

Creating the Installation Floppy Diskettes

Run the executable on a Windows 9x machine and have two floppies ready:

Creating a 2 GB FAT partition and installing MS-DOS 6.22

In the main menu select "Setup your hard disc"

Select your drive:

Select "Windows 98SE" then "Advanced Installation"

And create a FAT16 partition. It will automatically set the partition size correctly:

Reboot and press "Space" to boot from your MS-DOS 6.22 installation disk:

Ontrack uses quite a bit more memory compared to EZ-Drive:

Now run FDISK to create an extended partition and three logical drives:

Reboot and format the three logical drives are you are good to go! Four 2 GB partitions in MS-DOS 6.22:

Installing Windows 98 SE on a single 80 GB partition

Select "Setup your hard disc"

Choose "Windows 98 SE"

Go with the "Easy Installation"

Press "C" to boot from the Windows 98 SE Installation CD:

Install Windows 98 SE:

Windows 98 SE on a 80 GB HDD on a 486:

Removing Seagate DiscWizard

Select "Maintenance Options"

And select "Remove Dynamic Drive Overlay"

Conclusion / Summary

This late version of Ontrack is more demanding in terms of RAM (needs 16 MB) but also offers more functionality such as FAT32 support and the ability to boot from CD-ROM. My 486 can't boot from CD-ROM so this feature made installing Windows 98 SE very easy.

It also needs quite a bit more conventional memory compared to EZ-Drive.

The user interface is somewhat nicer and more polished as well.