I'd rather get a good IDE HDD, they're often cheaper online and offer more space. You could get a SATA HDD and use a converter too, but never tried that to see if they actually work properly or not.

This might help you a bit:

Hard drive options for Retro PCs

Short version: Go with a hard drive. My preferred method are modern SATA drives, mostly Seagate, capacity limited with SeaTools and using SATA to IDE adapters. I use it all my machines, apart from 386 and 486, they get CF cards and are DOS only.

Personally I recently used a CF card and adapter to ressurect a Packard Bell Legend 812CD and it worked absolutely perfectly. It's nice knowing that I won't (most likely) have to replace the HDD in the future but at the same time it's a shame because the computer is almost completely silent now.

Here you can see a video where I go over every modification I did to get the computer back on it's feet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caTMyZaRwuM

I use both - HDD for the OS, and CF for all the fun stuff. Best of both worlds.

I've only tried CompactFlash under DOS once. The card started having write errors after 3 reinstallations of a game I was having trouble with. It fell rather well shy of the rewrite cycles they claim to support. Maybe it was a fluke, but it just reinforced my past negative experiences with flash memory on other devices. I don't trust it, don't find it reliable. Still, I'd be willing to try it again, but if I want to be sure everything will just work, I'm more comfortable with a hard drive. Win98 will overwrite things more than DOS will, so I'd be more nervous about it with that OS.

I have a build that uses a Startech front-loading CF-to-IDE adapter. I discussed it in this post: Old Hard Drives

I also run my DOS-only build (486DX2-50) with an internal CF-to-IDE adapter.

I use Hitachi Microdrives instead of CF cards. I think that this technology works best with DOS-only builds. Windows 98SE does seem a tad sluggish compared to an IDE drive.

As I mentioned in the other post, I've had a few Microdrives fail on me. Not sure if it was my fault or not, but I wouldn't feel good if I didn't have an image backup of the drive.

microdrives are not suitable for long run times.. like playing long game sessions.
especially the IBM/Hitachi ones < 1Gb.
They were build for short data bursts like digital camera.
The Bigger Seagate Drives have better mechanics (4Gb,6Gb+)

i use 2x 1Gb CF-Cards in my DX4 100Mhz, without any issue.
And a 4Gb CF Card in another Retro PC since Years..

Both running MS-Dos

Even my 286 has a 128Mb Card.

I found Microdrives awfully slow. They use a slow rotational speed to begin with, coupled with a tiny circumference and you get slow speed. Access time is also slow.

I can't remember what pricing is like, but smaller CF cards don't cost much. Once you go to 32 or 64 GB though, I would start using SATA drives with capacity limit and SATA to IDE adapters. A 500 GB Seagate sells for maybe 50 bucks? And it's more versatile as you can re-use it in a Windows XP build or other setups.

Low capacity ssd's are getting quite cheap these days..any reason why you wouldn't go one of these instead?

64/128gb should be plenty you'd think.

I found cf and microdrives both quite unsatisfactory and wouldn't use them again - they both lagged when playing doom.

kreats wrote:

Low capacity ssd's are getting quite cheap these days..any readon why you wouldn't go one of these instead?

Have you used any?

Nup.. Probably pass down my htpc ssd eventually when i upgrade tho

kreats wrote:

Nup.. Probably pass down my htpc ssd eventually when i upgrade tho

Let us know how you go. Haven't done anything with SSD drives.

Will do..

Btw did you ever find a pci sata controller that does DMA under win 98?

kreats wrote:

Will do..

Btw did you ever find a pci sata controller that does DMA under win 98?

Nope. That's why I love my SATA to IDE adapters so much. These PCI controllers simply never worked out for me 😒

Under DOS they are ok though.

Alternatively, are there any PATA controllers with 48-bit LBA support that have working DMA under Win9x? If so, one of those + SATA to IDE adapter might be a viable alternative to a SATA controller if one wants to break the BIOS' size barrier.

alexanrs wrote:

Alternatively, are there any PATA controllers with 48-bit LBA support that have working DMA under Win9x? If so, one of those + SATA to IDE adapter might be a viable alternative to a SATA controller if one wants to break the BIOS' size barrier.

Just use EZ-Drive or Ontrack DDO software, works very well. But yes, I'm sure there are IDE controllers.

I'm pretty sure something like EZ-Drive cannot break the 137GB barrier if the controller lacks 48-bit LBA support, only artificial BIOS limitations (like 8GB/32GB/64GB), no? Not that a Windows 98 machine would benefit much from a 160+ disk anyway... but the ATA100+ speeds might be beneficial compared to some onboard ATA33/66 controllers.

Give it a go and find out. I always stick with drives up to 120 GB. But you can connect a 2 TB drive, and the BIOS will just "stop" at 128 MiB. And just pick the right machine for the task. If you need lots of storage, just go with Socket 478 board with SATA, does 2 TB natively. Supports W98 and CPUs as slow as 1.4 or so GHz. Or use a network storage. I connect to a 4 TB Raid 1 array. Just mount your CD images from there.

Regarding speed, well I'll throw you a challenge 😀

One of my 2 TB drives, limited to 120 GB, through SATA to IDE and connected to the onboard IDE of a Slot 1 machine against whatever you cook up 🤣 . I can tell you that this storage solutions is FAST. PCI controllers also add latency / overhead compared to the IDE controllers in the chipset.

ATA 66/100 sounds great, but on a Pentium III I don't see the point. Maybe for cloning disks, or copying stuff, but in terms of loading Windows or games, I doubt it does anything. But what a modern HDD does bring to the table is brutally fast access time and small file performance.

/\ All I need is a decent PCI IDE controller xD. I have a Pentium 1 system that, for some reason, won't let me enable DMA transfers through the onboard controller... Also a Compaq (one of those with the BIOS setup in a special partition) that I do not know how it would Interact with a DDO software... For this Compaq I'll probably have to get some low capacity CF card as the primary HDD to hold the setup, then put the system HDD on a separate controller or then explore Disk Drive Overlay options.