137 GB capacity limit and partitioning question

[phkhgh]

An elderly neighbor has an HP Pavilion Celeron 433, w/ Intel 440ZX chipset (82443ZX). Don't have the exact Asus mobo model (yet), but might be MEB-VM or MEZ-VM.

Either way, question is
IF there are no BIOS updates to enable 48bit LBA & allow disks > 137 GB, (is a BIOS update, but no indication it addresses 48bit LBA)

AND can't use Intel's Application Accelerator (can't - chipset too old)

AND she's not buying a PCI controller (she's not),

could you just partition a new drive into partitions < 137 GB (say 120 GB) using a partitioning utility that will run from DOS? Before the OS is installed, i.e., Win 98se?

If you partition, say a 160 GB disk into 120 GB & 40GB partitions (roughly), would the BIOS & Win 98 most likely recognize:

1) the HDD at all?
2) both partitions? Or only 1st 120 GB partition, or neither?

This paragraph is from Seagate's support site, and indicates a drive (they're discussing the 32 GB limit) could be partitioned to avoid the capacity limit issue:

If you format the drive with the CLJ or AC jumper then the drive capacity will be limited to 32GB. After removing the CLJ or AC jumper the drive will still be recognized as 32GB. You must reformat the drive without the CLJ or AC jumper to gain the full capacity of the drive. The other option is to create a second partition with the remaining unallocated disc space.


Thanks.

 

[oynaz]

Get the newest BIOS, install Windows as normally, then download and run Seatools. That should do the trick.

 

[Paperdoc]

If you're running an older Windows like 98SE, you will NOT have OS support for LBA48, even if the BIOS update does. LBA48 support is in WIN XP SP1 and SP2, and I undeerstand Win 2K got it with SP4.

Anyway, to answer your main question, YES. That's the simplest way to use a large HDD without LBA48. Simply partition the HDD into as many pieces as you need, all under 137 GB, formatting each as you go. (Formatting, of course, is separate outside of FDISK.) Go back and re-run FDISK if there is any unallocated space left for more. The OS will recognize all of them, assign them letters and treat them as independent drives.

Watch out for a binary math thing when partitioning. If you use FDISK.EXE under DOS, you will HAVE to specify NTFS file system. For that you need a newer version of FDISK, or do the work inside a newer Windows unsing the administrative tools for hard disks. FAT32 systems only allowed up to 32 GB. But you will find that the labelling looks odd in some systems. HDD makers treat "1 MB" as 1,000,000 bytes, so a 137 GB partition actually can handle 137,000,000,000 bytes. But some systems (notably, MS Windows) use "1 KB" to mean 1,024 bytes, "1 MB" is 1,048,576 bytes, and "1GB" is 1,073,741,824 bytes. Using that math, 137 GB turns into "127.59 GB" and you think something is missing.

When you use FDISK, it will limit you to a maximum parition size depending on your LBA support. So you can't make one too big. But don't worry if its max looks like 127 GB instead of 137.

 

[JackMDS]

It always puzzles me.

Some one who uses Celeron 433, w/ Intel 440ZX chipset (82443ZX) is probably not a "big" computer user.

So how come he/she needs more than 137GB?

However (as you posted above) Win98 would support 120GB partition and the remainder in a second partition.

You do it by making a Boot Floppy with DOS + FDISK + Format.

Boot from the floppy, use FDISK to make primary and extended partition, and format the two drives.

 

[Zepper]

Another option is to get a PCI disk controller (not expensive). Most of those for sale do support the 48-bit LBA addressing in their own firmware. You may be able to disable the on-board HDD controller to free up some resources. I generally keep a Syba ATA-133R (or Rosewill RC-208 or similar SiliconImage based) card on hand for this type of problem or for general onboard controller failures. Very flexible card that supports just about any type of drive up thru a RAID configuration, but the RAID features can simply be ignored if you don't need them. Be aware that you can find similar cards (e.g. the Rosewill RC-200) that don't support ATAPI drives (burners, etc.), so be sure to get the one you need.

.bh.