These are some common disk size limits you'll encounter. It's a guideline only with plenty of workarounds and exceptions.

286/386 generation IDE controllers:

The 528 MB limit

If the same values for c,h,s are used for the BIOS Int 13 call and for the IDE disk I/O, then both limitations combine, and one can use at most 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, for a maximum total capacity of 528482304 bytes (528MB), the infamous 504 MiB limit for DOS with an old BIOS. This started being a problem around 1993, and people resorted to all kinds of trickery, both in hardware (LBA), in firmware (translating BIOS), and in software (disk managers). The concept of `translation' was invented (1994): a BIOS could use one geometry while talking to the drive, and another, fake, geometry while talking to DOS, and translate between the two.

486 generation IDE controllers:

The 8.4 GB limit

Finally, if the BIOS does all it can to make this translation a success, and uses 255 heads and 63 sectors/track (`assisted LBA' or just `LBA') it may reach 1024*255*63*512=8422686720 bytes, slightly less than the earlier 8.5 GB limit because the geometries with 256 heads must be avoided. (This translation will use for the number of heads the first value H in the sequence 16, 32, 64, 128, 255 for which the total disk capacity fits in 1024*H*63*512, and then computes the number of cylinders C as total capacity divided by (H*63*512).)

Pentium generation IDE controllers:

The 33.8 GB limit (August 1999)

The next hurdle comes with a size over 33.8 GB. The problem is that with the default 16 heads and 63 sectors/track this corresponds to a number of cylinders of more than 65535, which does not fit into a short. Many BIOSes couldn't handle such disks. (See, e.g., Asus upgrades for new flash images that work.) Linux kernels older than 2.2.14 / 2.3.21 need a patch. See IDE problems with 34+ GB disks below.

In my opinion period correct sizes would be about 100mb for a 386, 300-500Mb for a 486, 4-6Gb for a P1, 10-20Gb for a P2, 40-80Gb for a P3 and 80-360Gb for a P4. I am sure some people had different size hard drives, but I am thinking what average user might have.

I'd say you're being optimistic there. Just looking at my own experience - in 1988 we had a pretty high-end 386-16 with a 60MB HDD. Friends with 286s and 20-40MB drives were jealous! In 1995 my Pentium 60 came with a 540MB HDD. Nothing special this time, but not small either. 4GB drives didn't become common until late 1997 or so, i.e. until the transition to P2. No P2 consumer-grade P2 would have been shipped with a 20GB drive either, that's deep P3 territory.

Good source for HDDs from the early 1980s to the early 2000s:
http://redhill.net.au/d/i.php

dionb wrote:

I'd say you're being optimistic there. Just looking at my own experience - in 1988 we had a pretty high-end 386-16 with a 60MB HDD. Friends with 286s and 20-40MB drives were jealous! In 1995 my Pentium 60 came with a 540MB HDD. Nothing special this time, but not small either. 4GB drives didn't become common until late 1997 or so, i.e. until the transition to P2. No P2 consumer-grade P2 would have been shipped with a 20GB drive either, that's deep P3 territory.

Good source for HDDs from the early 1980s to the early 2000s:
http://redhill.net.au/d/i.php

I got 40Mb hard drive with my 286 and upgraded it to 120Mb when I upgraded my 286 to 386. I bought a 4.2Gb quantum bigfoot CY with my P1. I skipped 486 completely back then so I am not expert on that.

IDE/CF adapters would be much better option. Really old HDDs is one of those things that should be avoided.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

IDE/CF adapters would be much better option. Really old HDDs is one of those things that should be avoided.

I don't understand why they should be avoided. If they fail, they fail. I don't keep anything on my retro computers that I would worry about losing. Everything can be installed again if the hard drive fails. Hard drive noises are part of the retro.

Unless you're heavily interested in building period correct machines, I wouldn't bother. Using old hard drives means slower disk operations and more hardware failures. For me, that takes valuable time away from having fun.

There must be a market for a IDE/CF adaptor with built-in buzzer that chirps and squeaks like a real hard drive.

Errius wrote:

There must be a market for a IDE/CF adaptor with built-in buzzer that chirps and squeaks like a real hard drive.

Doable. Just rig up something that plays a sound of X fractions of a second of HDD chatter each time the access LED is pulsed. I have no experience with recording sound to a chip for playback, so meh. Doesn't require wrecking an existing device or building a new one from the ground up, as it's basically an audio access indicator instead of a visual access indicator (LED), and of course you can use both.

Add a continuous irritating high-pitched whine to simulate the drive spinning too...

I would just shoot for the largest drive the machines can handle and have a cf to ide on standby incase the drive fails so you have no down time.

Old seagate drives and western digital caviar drives can still work well. My 486 is using my very own caviar drive from 1996 that has seen constant use. I know it will eventually go but sometomes you can get lucky, and if it craps out its cheap to replace or i can just use flash..

dionb wrote:

I'd say you're being optimistic there. Just looking at my own experience - in 1988 we had a pretty high-end 386-16 with a 60MB HDD. Friends with 286s and 20-40MB drives were jealous! In 1995 my Pentium 60 came with a 540MB HDD. Nothing special this time, but not small either. 4GB drives didn't become common until late 1997 or so, i.e. until the transition to P2. No P2 consumer-grade P2 would have been shipped with a 20GB drive either, that's deep P3 territory.

Good source for HDDs from the early 1980s to the early 2000s:
http://redhill.net.au/d/i.php

I think the different perception of yours is coming from you having latest CPU very early. In 1988, most people have 286s, 386 became very common later, in 1990-91. In 1995, normal people were using 486s. And in 1997, again normal people were using Pentiums, not PIIs.

At least where I live, but it was not that different in more developed countries (according to US computer magazines that I was following at that time).

So, 40MB for 286, 80-120MB for 386, 500-1000MB for 486 and 1GB+ for Pentium is actually more on target.

This aside, I would also put as large storage as the system in question can accept. And I don't shy away from using XT-IDE or software solutions like Ontrack if possible. My 486 has 20GB and 30GB drives, my 386 has 3 GBs.

Here is an excerpt from my reply to a recent similar subject:

286s were almost always came with drives (if they had any) around 40MB in size, also in here. But... When I bought my first ever […]
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286s were almost always came with drives (if they had any) around 40MB in size, also in here. But... When I bought my first ever PC in early 1992 (a cheapo 386SX-16, I had a very limited budget), 386DX was the king, 286 was something nobody buys, 486 was the (very) high end. 386DX-40s were going with 80 or 120MB HDDs. And 200 and more MBs were definately high end. Mine came with a 40MB drive, not because it's mainstream, but because I was poor. In late 1993 though, I supplied it with a second drive, an 240MB one.

When I finally upgraded my whole system into a 486-33 in mid 1994, I used the same drives, but by the end of 1994 and during first half of 1995, 540MB limit was already reached, VL bus controllers with their own "8GB" limit BIOSes was mainstream. This was the time of (not so) late 486 and early Pentium.

When I get my first Pentium in late 1996 / early 97 , It already had bigger-than-a-GB drives which I transfered from my last 486 system (Cyrix 5x86).

So, 250MB HDD being a thing for late 486 / early Pentium is a bit off.

All aside, my 486 build today has a 20GB and a 30 GB drive on it. My 386SX build has a 3GB. I don't see any point in limiting myself in HDD capacity today, which was a thing of the past, due to lack of money and BIOS limitations.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that all the HDDs I talked about above in my 386/486 builds are real mechanical HDDs. I use real HDDs in all of my retro builds. Actually 6 of the 7 HDDs in my daily modern(?) PC are also real HDDs. I love mechanical HDDs, both SCSI and IDE, just not the oldest and relatively expensive small capacity ones. 😊

I'm kind of in the "biggest the machine will take without too much hacking" crowd. I like to avoid disk managers, and as such, SCSI might be an option to circumvent some of the earlier (386-era 504MB) limitations.

When my dad bought his first 386, it came with a 120MB drive, which he later upgraded to a 250MB drive (IIRC -- it's been a while). It was adequate for the time. When I bought my own 486SX/25, it came with an 80MB drive. It was all I could afford at the time, and it was NOT enough.

Now, with access to all the games I would have liked to buy back then, I settled on this arrangement:

386 (DOS 5 / Win 3.x): 504MB (actually an 800MB Maxtor limited to 1023 cylinders)
486 (DOS 6 / Win 3.1): 1.2GB
Pentium (DOS 7 / Win95): 3.1GB
Pentium II (Win 98): 10GB
Pentium III (Win ME): 20GB (though I'm looking at upgrading it to 30 or even 40GB)
Pentium 4 (Win XP): 80GB

I'm still fine-tuning all of my setups (and likely will be, for a while), but this seems to be sufficient without being over-the-top. Adjust to taste, of course. If I were to combine any of the above systems, and therefore have to install some of the games together on fewer drives, I might bump the capacity by 50%. I typically do "full" installs whenever possible, for what it's worth.

I have no idea how you guys had 500MB+ HDDs for 486s.. My DX33 in 1993 came with only 213MB and by the time it was upgraded to a DX4 in 1995 I was either barely or still not at 500MB in terms of capacity. It was also very difficult to fill half a GB back in those days, no idea what you guys filled it with.

appiah4 wrote:

I have no idea how you guys had 500MB+ HDDs for 486s.. My DX33 in 1993 came with only 213MB and by the time it was upgraded to a DX4 in 1995 I was either barely or still not at 500MB in terms of capacity. It was also very difficult to fill half a GB back in those days, no idea what you guys filled it with.

I think that main thing was that the 486 era lasted quite long time, so that is why people had different sizes of hard drives for their 486. Like you could build a 33Mhz 486 from 1990 or you could build a 100Mhz 486 from year 1996. They would have very different hard drive sizes.

Lots of replies, thanks.

I am aware of the lmits of different platforms, ut not really looking to overcome them unless there’s a reason.

To illustrate, why bother with an inmense hdd for a 386? On such a machine I would probably play floppy based games and how many really were either installable or even copied to the hdd how much space would you reallt need?

That was the focus of the question, I mean, given the games I could play on 386 for example (and that would run well, not requiring the next step up say a 486), even if I copied them ALL to the hdd, would I need more than xxx MB..? Same for the others (486, P1, P2, etc).

Depends on how big your game collection gets. 😀 I have a bunch of Sierra series compilations... all the Kings Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, LSL that come on one to four CD-ROMs each. If you do full installs of some of the later games, they'll consume 30-100MB apiece. I think one of the Space Quest games installed 150MB! (And still needs the CD to play.) Doesn't take long to hit 500MB that way. I ended up moving the larger ones to the 486, since they were late enough to run OK on a faster machine, and just kept the pre-1993 games on the 386. I'm at around 40% used now.

As for 486-era drives, I do remember upgrading to a 750MB Western Digital drive on my original DX2/66. That would have been around 1995 or 96.

I cannot be period accurate nowadays for several reasons.

1. I just cannot find working drives of that period with proper size.
2. All the software I could not afford/try/get back then is now available, so I can have several operating systems or alternative programs thus requiring more free space. And I don't even mention games.

The friend of mine had 52 megabytes on for his DX2-66 so playing games was a torture, he had to remove and install it from CD every time he wanted to play. I had 810MB drive on my DX4-100 in 1997, upgrading to 4.3GB drive was like a breath of fresh air to me. And now when tons of good old stuff is available it's even more required.

I'm in 'the largest the machine will support' camp myself. There are plenty of cheap used 20GB drives (smaller than the 32GB limit, will usually be recognisable as 8.4GB on Award BIOS at least) on eBay.