Partitions limited to 504MB \ VOGONS

Partitions limited to 504MB

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First post, by Almoststew1990

Posted on 2021-01-16, 14:01

Almoststew1990 Offline

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Location: Southampton, UK

I am setting up my 386 with an 8GB CF card. Using fdisk, I make a primary DOS partition and hit Y to make it as large as possible. This comes out as 504MB. If I try to make another partition it says there isn't any space on the drive.

The bios sees the full 7641MB of my CF card and I've used this version of DOS6.22 fdisk to make 2GB partitions on my 486 so I am not sure what is going on here.

Any ideas?

Reply 1 of 2, by konc

Posted on 2021-01-16, 15:26

konc Offline

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There is a difference between auto-detect recognizing the full capacity of the card, and being able to use it. Also it's common for late 386s.
I'm pretty certain that you just have the 504MB limit.

Reply 2 of 2, by GigAHerZ

Posted on 2021-01-16, 15:39

GigAHerZ Offline

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It's the bios that has such ~500MB limit. Fat16 has 2GB partition limit.

You need either drive overlay software (EzDrive, OnTrack) or XT-IDE bios extension on a EEPROM installed into your computer with ethernet card for example.

The fact, that bios configuration software can support the values for larger drives, does not mean you bios functions support such large drives.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!

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