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First post, by Cyber Akuma

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From my understanding, Windows 98SE can't support a drive larger than 128/137GB.

I have an old Pentium 4 laptop I want to setup for old games, and I plan to dualboot 98 and XP on it.

If I put a 256GB drive in it, and create a 128GB FAt32 partition for Windows98 and a 128GB NTFS partition for XP, will that work without issues? Or would the drive itself being larger than 137GB cause problems in 98 even if I only have it installed on a 128GB partition? (I assume it would not see the other partition since it would be NTFS?).

Since it's a laptop and I really don't want to deal with ancient mechanical drives, I am planning to use a m.2 SATA to 2.5 IDE adapter to just use a M.2 SATA drive in it instead of a mechanical one.

Reply 1 of 8, by TrashPanda

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It should work fine but you'll lose half the drive unless you partition it under XP and create two partitions of equal size, you can then use that drive in 98SE and use all the drive as two separate drives. (Make sure it stays Fat32 or 98 wont be able to use it)

Reply 3 of 8, by TrashPanda

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Cyber Akuma wrote on 2022-01-15, 16:17:

So I will have to externally partition it first? From what I understand, I can't install XP first if I want to dualboot 98 and XP, I would have to install 98 first.

I would partition it on a different PC first so long as the partitions remain Fat32 98 and XP can use them fine, its up to you if you want to do this.

Reply 4 of 8, by Cyber Akuma

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Yeah, that works for me, will just need to get some sort of M.2 SATA/NVME to USB adapter. I needed one of those anyway. So as long as I pre-partition the drive Windows 98 shouldn't have issues with the drive being larger than 137GB if I just leave it on a 128Gb partition?

Also, wait, both partitions should be FAT32? The WindowsXP partition shouldn't be NTFS? Won't that definitely cause problems?

Reply 6 of 8, by Meatball

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Windows XP should be formatted with NTFS. You will have less risk of data corruption, and the NTFS partition will be invisible to Windows 9X (unless you install 3rd party drivers). You don't want Windows 98 accidently accessing your XP installation. If this were my install, I would be putting together a 256MB C: drive for only the system files (FAT), a D: for Windows 98 (FAT32), and an E: for Windows XP (NTFS). I wouldn't install Windows 98 on any partition greater than 32GB, either, but it's your system and capabilities exist to install however it suits your purpose. If you use greater than 32GB, you're going to waste a tremendous amount of disk space since 32KB cluster sizes are going to be used (size < 32,768MB uses 16KB clusters). Corruption risk also increases, but I bet you will reinstall your system before that ever happens (like me!)

Also keep in mind you won't be able to format a drive greater than 32GB for fixed partitions in Windows 2000 and later using windows native partitioning tools. You'll need 3rd party partitioning tools or utilities.

Finally, FAT32 has a 4GB file size limit. If you plan on running any on-disk backups in XP or install games which utilize large asset files exceeding 4GB, they will fail to install in XP because of this limitation.

Save yourself the hassle and install XP with NTFS and limit Windows 98 to 32GB. Most of the games should all be able to install on XP anyway, and you'll have better/more complete access to Glide/DOS emulators (if this is something you're interested in). You'll have 98 around for the handful of games giving you grief. I would install all of the games on XP first, test, and then reinstall the troublemakers on 98.

Last edited by Meatball on 2022-01-15, 19:35. Edited 7 times in total.

Reply 7 of 8, by bloodem

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NO!
You will actually need to limit the drive size.
The partitioning method will seem to work at first, but at some point you might see data corruption (depending on the size of said data).

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Reply 8 of 8, by Cyber Akuma

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I see. In that case probably would be best to just get a 128GB drive and split it into a 64GB FAT32 and NTFS partition for each. Seems there are still a few 128GB M.2 drives being sold, I was getting worried they would all be gone now.

Though the m.2 to IDE adapters seem to all be just cheap stuff you would find on AliExpress.

I was looking at these two:

https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-128GB-In … /dp/B079X7K6VP/

https://www.amazon.com/M-Key-44Pin-Enclosure- … /dp/B07Z67GX6W/

Any opinions on those? I figured no need to bother with any sort of high-end or high-speed drive since I am just going to convert it to IDE for a Pentium 4 laptop anyway. I saw one with a DRAM cache for more but I assume there is no way it's actually going to see any benefit in such an old system and being converted over such an old interface.