Good choice is modern fast Ultra-DMA drive with IDE 133 controller

just get a ide to sata adapter. that board should support udma5 so your performance will be enough.

120GB SSD is the gold standard for Win98 builds IMO, using an IDE/SATA adapter.

I'm using a 128gb SSD in an m.2 to Sata casing with a Sata to ide adapter plugged into that for a similar build. Way better idea than using an SD card.

Yeh you can run Win9x on SD cards but its not ideal.
SATA to IDE adapter is much better option, personally I think a standard SATA drive is plenty fast for 9x and cheaper as well, but if you like the idea of SDD then that's fine as well

chinny22 wrote on 2021-01-07, 10:47:

Yeh you can run Win9x on SD cards but its not ideal.

Why is it not ideal? I'm looking to set up several retro systems over the coming months, and have been looking at a 3.5 bay CF/IDE adapter with different OS on different CF cards on the earlier systems (up to Win 2K), so would be interested to know if that will cause problems.

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-07, 11:29:

chinny22 wrote on 2021-01-07, 10:47:

Yeh you can run Win9x on SD cards but its not ideal.

Why is it not ideal? I'm looking to set up several retro systems over the coming months, and have been looking at a 3.5 bay CF/IDE adapter with different OS on different CF cards on the earlier systems (up to Win 2K), so would be interested to know if that will cause problems.

I would like to know that as well, as i though it could be an option. So far i think i'll get an IDE to SATA adapter but i'd like to know the issues with the CF/IDE adapter for SD cards with older OS like win 9x

ernestb86 wrote on 2021-01-07, 12:40:

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-07, 11:29:

chinny22 wrote on 2021-01-07, 10:47:

Yeh you can run Win9x on SD cards but its not ideal.

Why is it not ideal? I'm looking to set up several retro systems over the coming months, and have been looking at a 3.5 bay CF/IDE adapter with different OS on different CF cards on the earlier systems (up to Win 2K), so would be interested to know if that will cause problems.

I would like to know that as well, as i though it could be an option. So far i think i'll get an IDE to SATA adapter but i'd like to know the issues with the CF/IDE adapter for SD cards with older OS like win 9x

Many people report windows feeling sluggish, possible causes of this is are cards having slower access times, which gets important in a multitasking OS.
You also have the added complexity of varying quality of cards and adapters, either not allowing you to enable DMA or just poor performance.

Wear on the cards is also a consideration, dos is fine as it writes very little back to the drive compared to windows and its page file. This doesn't really bother me as a SD card is cheap to replace so is spinning rust.

Personally I think in dos they are great but for windows the negatives outweigh the positives. They have been successfully used in a number of systems including my PPro box with CF cards for different OS's but if your building dedicated gaming PC the SATA to IDE option is much safer bet.

ernestb86 wrote on 2021-01-07, 12:40:

debs3759 wrote on 2021-01-07, 11:29:

chinny22 wrote on 2021-01-07, 10:47:

Yeh you can run Win9x on SD cards but its not ideal.

Why is it not ideal? I'm looking to set up several retro systems over the coming months, and have been looking at a 3.5 bay CF/IDE adapter with different OS on different CF cards on the earlier systems (up to Win 2K), so would be interested to know if that will cause problems.

I would like to know that as well, as i though it could be an option. So far i think i'll get an IDE to SATA adapter but i'd like to know the issues with the CF/IDE adapter for SD cards with older OS like win 9x

Well, one issue that I can think of - the KTC FC130x bridge chip used in CF/SD<->IDE adapters were designed back in the mid-2000s, and they are limited to about 25-27MBytes/sec of sustained throughput. I don't think there were follow-up designs that improved performance further. Okay if you are planning to use them for UDMA33 machines or older (Intel 430/440 chipset and etc), but in UDMA100 capable machines, you're still bound to that limit.

chinny22 wrote on 2021-01-07, 10:47:

Yeh you can run Win9x on SD cards but its not ideal.
SATA to IDE adapter is much better option, personally I think a standard SATA drive is plenty fast for 9x and cheaper as well, but if you like the idea of SDD then that's fine as well

My Win9X machine is SATA native via mobo support, but yeah, a 128GB SSD for classic Windows is amazing. The access time is so low it's bananas. I didn't even remember to activate DMA but the access time was so fast I didn't even notice until doing bench marks. (And now it basically saturates 133MB ATA with DMA enabled). Even if this is a 'cheap' Kingston A400 drive, from a Win9X perspective, it's faster than god.

kolderman wrote on 2021-01-06, 21:17:

120GB SSD is the gold standard for Win98 builds IMO, using an IDE/SATA adapter.

That is what I use! With DMA and proper alignment you can fully saturate whatever bus you have.