Windows 98 can not use hard disks larger than 128 GB. If it is larger, writing to anything past the 128 GB will cause a wrap-around and cause random data corruption.

https://msfn.org/board/topic/148706-max-size- … 8se-can-handle/

I personally use a SIL3114 based SATA controller and have installed this http://www.mdgx.com/files/BHDD31.ZIP from http://www.mdgx.com/upd98me.php for the updated utils .
I have a 500GB SATA drive with multiple <127GB partitions in use with no issues .

EDIT : The partition table was created with a Linux bootable CD or FreeDOS (not sure which) .

What's special about that particular SATA controller that Windows prefers to any type of on-board controller?

You can patch win9x to work with hard drives up to 2TB, but it isn't really worth it IMO. 128gb is an absolutely massive amount of space.

mothergoose729 wrote:

You can patch win9x to work with hard drives up to 2TB, but it isn't really worth it IMO. 128gb is an absolutely massive amount of space.

You're right. The only reason I was trying to use larger was to have all my retro PC software and drivers there and available for me on another partition rather than finding discs or constantly transfering files between PC's on USB flash drives.

tails wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

You can patch win9x to work with hard drives up to 2TB, but it isn't really worth it IMO. 128gb is an absolutely massive amount of space.

You're right. The only reason I was trying to use larger was to have all my retro PC software and drivers there and available for me on another partition rather than finding discs or constantly transfering files between PC's on USB flash drives.

You still cant do this with 128GB? Honest question as I do exactly this but don't even fill 128GB

derSammler wrote:

Windows 98 can not use hard disks larger than 128 GB. If it is larger, writing to anything past the 128 GB will cause a wrap-around and cause random data corruption.

Is it possible to set larger drive to read only and use them to copy from?

There are bridge adapters that make hard disks read-only. But just by software, I'm not aware of any methods to do so.

chinny22 wrote:

tails wrote:

mothergoose729 wrote:

You can patch win9x to work with hard drives up to 2TB, but it isn't really worth it IMO. 128gb is an absolutely massive amount of space.

You're right. The only reason I was trying to use larger was to have all my retro PC software and drivers there and available for me on another partition rather than finding discs or constantly transfering files between PC's on USB flash drives.

You still cant do this with 128GB? Honest question as I do exactly this but don't even fill 128GB

I probably can. Just also wanted to use some of the hardware I have on hand

tails wrote:

What's special about that particular SATA controller that Windows prefers to any type of on-board controller?

It's not really special, it is just one example of a controller that requires its own driver and does not use esdi_506.pdr .

esdi_506.pdr limitations are the root cause of the issue with drive size .

what about external usb drives using the nusb stack? i've got a 500gb external hdd which has 7 x 32gb FAT32 partitions and one big NTFS partition. will i have problems after the 4th partition where the size gets over the limit? i haven't noticed anything strange (yet) and i've swapped this drive between 5 computers, filling up about 180gb of it so far...

foil_fresh wrote:

what about external usb drives using the nusb stack? i've got a 500gb external hdd which has 7 x 32gb FAT32 partitions and one big NTFS partition. will i have problems after the 4th partition where the size gets over the limit? i haven't noticed anything strange (yet) and i've swapped this drive between 5 computers, filling up about 180gb of it so far...

Problem is Win9x doesn't understand NTFS nativity.
You can get 3rd party programs, the read only versions can be free which may be enough for what your after anyway.
https://msfn.org/board/topic/110814-ntfs-supp … -in-win-98seme/

im keeping the ntfs partition for xp only so it never gets detected in win98 thus not an issue for me, just worried about the 7x32gb aspect.

edit: i will add that this is a usb 3.0 drive connecting via an NEC PCI USB 2.0 card, using NUSB 3.6 and the NEC drivers for the card. The disk driver is a standard driver from the 98se cd.

edit2: looks like i've fudged myself pretty hard, 22bit lba extends to external/removable media. there is a possibility things written past the 128th gigabyte will wrap around and write to the beginning of the disk (the partition with all my DOS games on it... uh oh. explains why i had so much trouble last night installing video drivers 😀

I have used an external USB drive with Win98 without issues well over 128GB. My current setup uses a Pi and an SMBv1 share. I think it’s strictly a limitation with the onboard HDD controllers and BIOS at the time.

SaxxonPike wrote:

I have used an external USB drive with Win98 without issues well over 128GB. My current setup uses a Pi and an SMBv1 share. I think it’s strictly a limitation with the onboard HDD controllers and BIOS at the time.

do you recall if you filled up over 128gb?

I only add this, as 128gb drives are starting to become "too small" for the mass market, and will "soon" be hard to locate

Research seems to say that to install Windows 98SE on HDD larger than 128gb:
- Make the first partition exactly 128gb (Phil has a video, well detailed. BUT IMHO, its easier to use a win2k or XP disk to format as fat32 and stop before installation)
- Install the Windows on it
- Apply a patch to access the whole HDD (I believe we are again "super hard" limited at 4tb)
- (Optional) Resize partition with 3rd party tools

Windows 98se "shouldnt" be able to see info past the 136gb "OS barrier" pre-patch, but as long as it "cant try to write to that area", you should avoid BSOD's at least

/
Recovered Mdgx files, info, readme, file: http://www.techtalk.cc/viewtopic.php?p=16873& … f8e5f4b6#p16873

Unofficial Windows 98 SE 48-bit LBA > 137 GB Hard Disk
ATA/IDE Improved Driver ESDI_506.PDR 4.10.2230 ReadMe

Unofficial Windows 98 SE 48-bit LBA > 137 GB Hard Disk ATA/IDE Improved Driver ESDI_506.PDR 4.10.2230 ReadMe in plain text (ASCII) format

Cached:
ATADRV98.EXE = http://www.techtalk.cc/download/file.php?id=9 … baef8dcf8e5f4b6