StriderTR wrote on 2026-01-01, 19:12:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-30, 21:43:

keenmaster486 wrote on 2025-12-30, 21:08:

You can always just use two drives.

If you mean the HDD I currently have and a new one, I can't sadly. I only have enough space for three HDDs in total. One for Windows, one for games, and then one for CD images. 😀

If all else fails, you can also split that 256GB drive into two partitions, one 128GB and one with the remaining space. This is what I did in my Win95 system, but split into 32GB partitions.

That's true. 😀

douglar wrote on 2026-01-01, 16:50:

This type of tool is called a “Dynamic Drive Overlay”. A drive overlay gets installed into a tiny space outside of your normal […]
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DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-12-31, 21:40:

Ahh, I see. Interesting. Learning new stuff all the time. 😀 Just so glad that HDDs are cheap to get, so will look at ordering one very soon and try this out.

Is this a tool that would need booting each time or is it something that only needs to be run the once?

This type of tool is called a “Dynamic Drive Overlay”. A drive overlay gets installed into a tiny space outside of your normal partitions, runs at bootup before your operating system.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/glossary/what-is-ddo/index.html

https://www.tek-tips.com/threads/ontrack-dyna … overlay.841791/

Cool. Thanks for the links. 😀

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-12-31, 22:37:

If you have a spare PCI slot you can go down the hardware support route. Something like an older Silicon Image ATA133 controller E.G. SIL0680 non-raid that has the option boot ROM with it's own LBA48 support, or a similar Promise card.

I did actually look into the possibility of getting a PCI board with more IDE ports so I could hook up my other LED cables. I take it that's the same thing...? Or would that be a totally different kind of controller/board?

StriderTR wrote on 2026-01-01, 19:12:

If all else fails, you can also split that 256GB drive into two partitions, one 128GB and one with the remaining space. This is what I did in my Win95 system, but split into 32GB partitions.

I don't think it works for LBA limitations since the limit is in the physical disk access rather than the partition table or file system. The 32GB limit in Win95 was a filesystem limitation where OSR2 could only create up to 32GB FAT32 partitions. Since LBA28 allowed up to 128GB of physical disk access, you could create as many 32GB logical drives as you wanted up to the LBA limit.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2026-01-01, 19:23:

I did actually look into the possibility of getting a PCI board with more IDE ports so I could hook up my other LED cables. I take it that's the same thing...? Or would that be a totally different kind of controller/board?

The PCI cards will have activity LED headers for the extra channels - My SIL0680 has two headers, one for each channel. Some have one header for both. Since there's no way for the PCI card to activate the HDD light on the motherboard they have to provide their own.

Finally got another HDD. However, even applying that patch on boot, it's not recognising the drive with the full capacity. It recognises it as 128GB instead of 320GB. Also, whenever I try to run ScanDisk to check the drive, it keeps giving me a BSOD. It says a fatal exception 0E has occured at 0028:C02980CC in VXD VWIN32(05) + 00000BF4.

As usual, nothing is ever straight forward. 😩 Connected the drive to my main PC to try and do a scan, but my adapter and PC isn’t recognising it. Every other IDE HDD I’ve connected has worked without issue, so I’m not sure if it has a fault or something else.

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 20:43:

As usual, nothing is ever straight forward. 😩 Connected the drive to my main PC to try and do a scan, but my adapter and PC isn’t recognising it. Every other IDE HDD I’ve connected has worked without issue, so I’m not sure if it has a fault or something else.

Is this the only drive that is larger than 137GB? If yes, then the IDE controller is unstable with drives larger than the LBA28 limit. There is software to artificially limit the capacity of a drive to <137GB, or if you really need more than that on a single drive (not a single partition), you need an LBA48 IDE controller and the windows98SE LBA48 patch.

Also the drive itself could be dying, if it can't be recognised by a newer computer and is showing corruption on an older computer. Normally I would say do a smart scan but how do you do that if the drive doesn't show up 🤔

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 22:01:

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 20:43:

As usual, nothing is ever straight forward. 😩 Connected the drive to my main PC to try and do a scan, but my adapter and PC isn’t recognising it. Every other IDE HDD I’ve connected has worked without issue, so I’m not sure if it has a fault or something else.

Is this the only drive that is larger than 137GB? If yes, then the IDE controller is unstable with drives larger than the LBA28 limit. There is software to artificially limit the capacity of a drive to <137GB, or if you really need more than that on a single drive (not a single partition), you need an LBA48 IDE controller and the windows98SE LBA48 patch.

Also the drive itself could be dying, if it can't be recognised by a newer computer and is showing corruption on an older computer. Normally I would say do a smart scan but how do you do that if the drive doesn't show up 🤔

It is, yeah. And I suspect the software is the patch that was mentioned earlier in the thread...? It's the same one I applied in my autoexec.bat file. Though I understand it's supposed to run before DOS initialises...? I might have to look into an LBA48 IDE controller. Thanks. 😀 It would be ideal to have the full capacity as it's for my CD images and they do eat up a lot of space.

I can't remember if I've tried bigger drives with my IDE adapter before, or what each of their sizes were.

EDIT: Oh. I should also mention that the drive is connected to the Ultra ATA/66 controller. If that makes any difference...?

Hmm. There doesn't appear to be many options. Not sure if they've become a bit sought after...? Most of my searches come up with PCI-e adapters and RAID cards. I have seen one Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE card, but it doesn't say anything about it being LBA48 though.

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 22:41:

Hmm. There doesn't appear to be many options. Not sure if they've become a bit sought after...? Most of my searches come up with PCI-e adapters and RAID cards. I have seen one Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE card, but it doesn't say anything about it being LBA48 though.

PCI storage controllers which are ATA100/133 would support it. I have an ATA133 SIL0680A controller which has large drive/LBA48 support. The software mentioned earlier in the thread is Ontrack Dynamic Drive Overlay. Maybe you can try it out before investing in more hardware.

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 22:26:

EDIT: Oh. I should also mention that the drive is connected to the Ultra ATA/66 controller. If that makes any difference...?

I would not expect an Ultra ATA/66 controller to have a BIOS that knows how to speak LBA48 addressing, and so would only be able to see at most 128GB when looking at a drive.

128GB = 137438953472 bytes.

But it's not the controller that's the issue. Nothing is physically stopping an ATA66 controller from using LBA48 addressing. It's the software, in this case the BIOS or Windows driver that you use that's going to be the problem. Perhaps there is a BIOS upgrade for your controller that will fix the issue.

douglar wrote on Yesterday, 22:59:

I would not expect an Ultra ATA/66 controller to have a BIOS that knows how to speak LBA48 addressing, and so would only be able […]
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DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 22:26:

EDIT: Oh. I should also mention that the drive is connected to the Ultra ATA/66 controller. If that makes any difference...?

I would not expect an Ultra ATA/66 controller to have a BIOS that knows how to speak LBA48 addressing, and so would only be able to see at most 128GB when looking at a drive.

128GB = 137438953472 bytes.

But it's not the controller that's the issue. Nothing is physically stopping an ATA66 controller from using LBA48 addressing. It's the software, in this case the BIOS or Windows driver that you use that's going to be the problem. Perhaps there is a BIOS upgrade for your controller that will fix the issue.

I think the BIOSes are upgraded to their latest version. The one for the HighPoint Technologies IDE controller is 1.25 or 1.26. And the BIOS is BEH-70 from 2001, I believe.

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 22:54:

DustyShinigami wrote on Yesterday, 22:41:

Hmm. There doesn't appear to be many options. Not sure if they've become a bit sought after...? Most of my searches come up with PCI-e adapters and RAID cards. I have seen one Promise Ultra66 PCI IDE card, but it doesn't say anything about it being LBA48 though.

PCI storage controllers which are ATA100/133 would support it. I have an ATA133 SIL0680A controller which has large drive/LBA48 support. The software mentioned earlier in the thread is Ontrack Dynamic Drive Overlay. Maybe you can try it out before investing in more hardware.

So something like this...?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/376956367884?_skw= … ABk9SR5Dy1PObZw

I figured there might be a resource conflict causing the issue with ScanDisk, but I'm guessing not...? Device Manager says the device is working properly. Although System Information does list the HighPoint IDE as using IRQ 4 for three things. Although I'm sure that's what it was like with the other HDD.

It won't even run Disk Defragmenter either. Says there's not enough memory.

you can get a fat32 capacity of up to 2tb.
I got windows 98se to run a 500gb single fat32 IDE partition boot disk with allocation size of 4096. The motherboard had built in ATA100 support.
I used an IDE to SATA hard disk bridge adapter to format the disk with windows 11 and a 3rd party format tool.
To use the disk for windows 98SE I used Rudolph Loew's patch.

Will try Ontrack a bit later and see what happens. Also tried checking for a Silicon Image ATA133 controller that was suggested earlier in the thread, but unsurprisingly, the listings I’m seeing are all RAID. 😕

They have built in SETUP Menu to select either IDE or RAID mode.
I think many motherboards need any built in IDE controllers disabled to run these cards.

zapbuzz wrote on Today, 11:03:

They have built in SETUP Menu to select either IDE or RAID mode.
I think many motherboards need any built in IDE controllers disabled to run these cards.

Ah. So it definitely needs to be none RAID…?

DustyShinigami wrote on Today, 11:11:

zapbuzz wrote on Today, 11:03:

They have built in SETUP Menu to select either IDE or RAID mode.
I think many motherboards need any built in IDE controllers disabled to run these cards.

Ah. So it definitely needs to be none RAID…?

after post the card initialises and displays its splash screen where you can either wait for the system to boot or enter its setup menu. In its setup menu you simply select either RAID or IDE. Being IDE you select such to run 1 disk.

zapbuzz wrote on Today, 11:50:

DustyShinigami wrote on Today, 11:11:

zapbuzz wrote on Today, 11:03:

They have built in SETUP Menu to select either IDE or RAID mode.
I think many motherboards need any built in IDE controllers disabled to run these cards.

Ah. So it definitely needs to be none RAID…?

after post the card initialises and displays its splash screen where you can either wait for the system to boot or enter its setup menu. In its setup menu you simply select either RAID or IDE. Being IDE you select such to run 1 disk.

Ahh, I see. So a bit like my HighPoint one at the moment. Though I'm not sure if that gives an option to switch between the two. But I take it a Silicon Image ATA133 has LBA48 support? I don't really know anything about these IDE adapters and info for them on eBay doesn't specify one way or the other.

EDIT: Ah, wait. Just saw a manual for that particular model and it mentions 48-bit addressing. And that it supports drives beyond 137GB.