I heard some patches for 128gb+ disks & win9x are exists. Probably the better way is to install 98SE on another disk, install all need patches and updates, then copy all files to 1TB disk and do "sys d:" command (where D: is the 1tb disk). This is a safest way as the system will have big disk support at time of its first launch on it.

ATauenis wrote on 2021-04-24, 08:32:

I heard some patches for 128gb+ disks & win9x are exists. Probably the better way is to install 98SE on another disk, install all need patches and updates, then copy all files to 1TB disk and do "sys d:" command (where D: is the 1tb disk). This is a safest way as the system will have big disk support at time of its first launch on it.

Awesome, thank you!

I would not bother with this whatsoever your wasting your time. It's like you try to play an Audio CD on an old LP player, good luck with it.
Just get an IDE to SDcard adapter and a 128GB SDcard, both from ebay is like 50 bucks and your set for life.

I have a similar setup with a 256GB sdcard and win98 can see all the partitions even tho I think I have all FAT32 under the 128GB boundary, I have linuxes, XP on the higher parts.

If you are sure your disk is set up right and you just want to skip scandisk use "setup /is" to do so.
You can also use a newer version of fdsik to create your partition if you aren't 100% positive you have set up your partition correctly. https://silentdragon.com/download/FDisk/

Gopher666 wrote on 2021-04-24, 13:07:

I would not bother with this whatsoever your wasting your time. It's like you try to play an Audio CD on an old LP player, good luck with it.
Just get an IDE to SDcard adapter and a 128GB SDcard, both from ebay is like 50 bucks and your set for life.

I have a similar setup with a 256GB sdcard and win98 can see all the partitions even tho I think I have all FAT32 under the 128GB boundary, I have linuxes, XP on the higher parts.

I disagree. I have been using HDDs larger than 128GB for a long time for Win9x.
Also HDDs are meant to be used as system drives while SD cards are not. The analogy applies better to the solution you recommend.

Recommended viewing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5ivV5tyfRs

I feel dumb because what I ended up doing last night was just waiting for the long format screen for it to then work. Everything runs great, I just didn't trust the lengthy time of the format, but given that it's a 1TB drive way past that era, it would make sense that it would take awhile. Thank you everyone for the help in advance 😀

Personally I would have at least partitioned it.
Even 40GB takes ages for scandisk to run if windows isn't shutdown correctly.
Plus you can keep the Windows install files and data safe on the 2nd partition if windows commits suicide.

Just something to keep in mind next rebuild, If your up and running now I wouldn't change anything!

I was trying large HDDs on my Win98SE K6-III+ build and noticed that anything over 60GB would cause 'insufficient memory' errors when attempting to run scandisk or defrag, rendering the programs useless, and that's with 512MB. There might've been other problems too yet undiscovered.

maestro wrote on 2021-04-26, 16:07:

I was trying large HDDs on my Win98SE K6-III+ build and noticed that anything over 60GB would cause 'insufficient memory' errors when attempting to run scandisk or defrag, rendering the programs useless, and that's with 512MB. There might've been other problems too yet undiscovered.

You can try using the ScanDisk of Windows ME, it's a Windows application.. 😉

(Sure, the 98's ScanDisk EXE has both a DOS/Win9x code path,
but the ME version is newer and designed to fix its system drive under Windows..)

Doornkaat wrote on 2021-04-24, 14:49:

I disagree. I have been using HDDs larger than 128GB for a long time for Win9x.
Also HDDs are meant to be used as system drives while SD cards are not. The analogy applies better to the solution you recommend.

Idk man I did some load tests (and at the end that is all what matters) and my fastest 250GB IDE drive I have in hand was about equal in load speed of Win98SE than these adapters. Tried it with and without DMA does not make a hell of a lot difference.

What can squeeze out more throughput from this is hdparm -tfT /dev/sdX in linux, that does like 30MB/s for the SD adapter and 60MB/s for the regular IDE drive.

Setting that aside, except some industrial applications I doubt that they manufacture IDE drives anymore so they are dieing beasts, give the ones floating around on the retropc market another good +10/20 years and they will end up like the MFM drives currently with their heads rot in.

At first I was also skeptical about these SDCARD converters as I have more than enough of old IDE drives I got for free/as junk however they have 1 huge advantage they are completely silent and don't generate any heat either. Now my retro build is completely fanless except the power supply...

Gopher666 wrote on 2021-04-27, 08:42:

At first I was also skeptical about these SDCARD converters as I have more than enough of old IDE drives I got for free/as junk however they have 1 huge advantage they are completely silent and don't generate any heat either. Now my retro build is completely fanless except the power supply...

Another big advantage is seek time. An actually SSD drive might be faster, but SD cards are dirt cheap.

I have 3d printed brackets so I can access the disk from the back of the PC. I can easily remove the card and connect it to a modern PC to copy/remove files. This was a huge help when I was getting Windows 98 patches and drivers figured out. I could easily blow away all of the directories and leave only the Windows install files and a driver folder. I could then do a clean install in about 15 mins.

You can also easily image the SD card once you get a good config. You also have ability to switch cards so you could have a pure DOS config, Win95, 98, 98SE, XP, etc.

Gopher666 wrote on 2021-04-27, 08:42:

Idk man I did some load tests (and at the end that is all what matters) and my fastest 250GB IDE drive I have in hand was about […]
Show full quote

Idk man I did some load tests (and at the end that is all what matters) and my fastest 250GB IDE drive I have in hand was about equal in load speed of Win98SE than these adapters. Tried it with and without DMA does not make a hell of a lot difference.

What can squeeze out more throughput from this is hdparm -tfT /dev/sdX in linux, that does like 30MB/s for the SD adapter and 60MB/s for the regular IDE drive.

Setting that aside, except some industrial applications I doubt that they manufacture IDE drives anymore so they are dieing beasts, give the ones floating around on the retropc market another good +10/20 years and they will end up like the MFM drives currently with their heads rot in.

At first I was also skeptical about these SDCARD converters as I have more than enough of old IDE drives I got for free/as junk however they have 1 huge advantage they are completely silent and don't generate any heat either. Now my retro build is completely fanless except the power supply...

My comment was aiming mostly at the analogy of playing "an Audio CD on an old LP player". Obviously this is impossible and will most likely damage the CD. Using an SATA HDD with an IDE-SATA adaptor to run Win98 is far from impossible and will not cause damage. It certainly is not "wasting your time."
On the other hand while SD card to IDE adaptors work well enough SD cards aren't meant to be used for this and depending on the controller and the individual use the SD card will be subjected to increased wear. Hence I'm saying the analogy applies better to this.

I agree however on flash storage being the better long term solution for retro PCs.
Personally I wouldn't bother with SD cards and go the SSD route wherever possible. They're cheap as well, generally use better flash memory and will usually far outperform SD cards.

I hope this clears things up. 👍