FAT32 limitations and other questions...

[twilly]

I have a client that converted his Dell PowerEdge 1300 server from NT 4 Server to Windows98(not SE). I wasn't informed of this. He wanted 3 80gb drives to backups with.

So I thought to get removable drive cages, which I did along with the 3 80gb drives.

Problem #1.
When I went to go install the drives, I noticed that he had Win98, which the built-in backup utility only does removable drive, not removable hard drives.

Problem 2.

I booted off a Windows98 boot disk and fdisk the drive to create the partitions on the new drive, it only recognized 12gb of the 80gb. I figured there must be some sort of limitation of fdisk, at least that version.

Problem 3.

I did some reading and FAT32 has a 32gb partition limit on it, bummer, including XP and Windows 2000.

Problem 4.

After creating the 12gb partition in fdisk(since that is the largest it will let me), I restarted the machine, and the machine wanted to boot from that drive. I didn't see anything in the BIOS that lets you set boot order.

The boot drive is a SCSI drive 9.1gb
The second drive is a SCSI drive 36gb(client said had issues with this drive, 32gb limitation?)

On the IDE controller:

Primary controller:

Master: CD-ROM drive
Slave: New 80gb drive

Secondary Controller:

Master: none
Slave: none

I didn't try the other controller because I didn't have another IDE cable with me, otherwise I would of. Would putting the 80gb drive solve the boot issue of trying to go to the 80gb hard drive for booting?

If not, what would solve this?

I also have an ata/100 controller which I could use, but I have tried to use this thing in my older Asus P3B-F motherboard(BX chipset w/o ata/66 or ata/100) and it would not boot from it or prevents it from booting

Possible solutions:

Convert Windows98 to Windows2000. I already bought Win2k. This will solve the 32gb issue with NTFS, but still need to get the drive to cooperate with win98 so it will not try to boot from it so I can backup the current data before migrating to Windows 2000 <- ABSOLUTE MUST!!!

Any suggestions, solutions to get win98 to NOT boot from the 80gb drive?

I ended up formatting one of the drive in 32gb partition so I can backup win98. I formatted this drive with Windows 2000 and hopefully windows98 does recognize it and hopefully it is not a newer version of fat32, which could cause problems(Win95 fat32 vs. win98 fat32, win98 is newer)

Thanks for all your help

 

[AndyHui]

Please read the FAQ: FAT32 vs NTFS for all the limitations of FAT32 and how to get around the 32GB limit.

 

[twilly]

Thanks! That was somewhat informative!

Now I got to figure out the boot issue, any comments regarding to that?

 

[lowtech1]

When I went to go install the drives, I noticed that he had Win98, which the built-in backup utility only does removable drive, not removable hard drives.

You can back up to a removable device or hdd. Just point what ever you want to the volume that you want to backup. Since you have so much hdd space you might want to use a ghosting ultility for full backup & more compleat backup.

You have to set the volume with Win98 on it as the Active partition (win98 only support 1 Active vollum), and it sound like the SCSI is set as the active volume. FDISK in DOS & set the Win98 partition as Active.

The easy route is to unplug a cable from the HDDs with all "data" that you want to backup/migrate , then create + format (NTFS) + install Win2k from CD. Plug the "data" HDDs cable back on then boot into Win2k to read & copy the important "data" after the Win2k install compleated. Once all data have been copy to the new partition, you can then reclaim the old partion using the Win2k disk-management tool.

Does the BIOS see more than 32 gig?
Older bios may need an upgrade or drive overlay program to see more than 8 or 32 gigs.

 

[Derango]

Just a question here...why in gods name did your client install windows 98 on a server?!?!?

 

[Abzstrak]

WTF? win98? tell him U'll help install a real OS or he can go to hell...