Formatting Larger Hard Drives in Win98SE

[lewmur]

BTW, you had better read up on your English as well. My use of "your " (adj. The possessive form of you.) was and is grammatically correct. "You're" is a contraction of "you" and "are."

As in "you are screwed." You never admit when you're wrong. Like you won't admit you're wrong about not being able to image partitions larger than 4gb using Win98. Edited February 19, 2006 by lewmur

[b2cm]

Thanks you! :thumbsup:Oops! Meant that post for James (for the sticky on win2003 tips). No pun intended.

[Peachy]

I think Marsden's language was a bit imprecise. Here's my thoughts on this.You can back up partitions (FAT32 or NTFS) greater than 4GB to a FAT32 partition but the resulting image must be made in chunks no larger than 4GB because FAT32 has a file size limit of 4GB. But a lot of image backup tools allow you to specify the image size in chunks. For example Ghost will always create a maximum file size of 2GB (because that's the FAT16 file size limit). If your image backup utility does not allow file size chunking then you're screwed.At work I maintain a multi-boot image for one of our labs. It has a Windows Server 2003 partition that is 6GB, which I make a Ghost image of and store locally in a 9 GB FAT32 partition. Ghost saves it in chunks, the largest being 2GB.

[Marsden11]

Breaking a partition image into chunks is a "kludge" compared to creating a single partition image on a NTFS partition. If I want to work with video files greater than 4GB I CAN'T do that on a Win98 machine with FAT32 formatted partitions. FACT!I have never seen any professional video editing software that will render a single video project into "chunks" so it will fit on outdated, inefficient, nonrecoverable FAT32 partitions.Can SCANDSK recover corrupt files from a FAT32 partition?Can CHKDSK recover corrupt files from a FAT32 partition?One key advantage of NTFS is that it is a recoverable file system because it keeps track of transactions against the file system. When a CHKDSK is performed on FAT32, the consistency of pointers within the directory, allocation, and file tables is only being checked. Under NTFS, a log of transactions against these components is maintained so that CHKDSK need only roll back transactions to the last commit point in order to recover consistency within the file system. Under FAT, if a sector that is the location of one of the file system's special objects fails, then a single sector failure will occur. NTFS avoids this in two ways: first, by not using special objects on the disk and tracking and protecting all objects that are on the disk. Secondly, under NTFS, multiple copies (the number depends on the volume size) of the Master File Table are kept.If you prefer to use kludges to make large disks formatted in FAT32 work... knock yourself out. I prefer the easier way...

[Marsden11]

No offense Peachy, but If you worked for me and I discovered you were storing even remotely important files on FAT32 partitions when you have NTFS partitions available... you would be unemployed. Nothing personal you understand, just business.

[Jeber]

Personal comments about other members are not allowed.Please keep your posts on topic or they will be deleted and the thread closed.Do not respond to this post within this thread. Send a PM or email to an administrator or moderator if you have any questions or comments.

[Peachy]

Marsden,You of all people should know that Symantec Ghost cannot create partition sizes greater than 2GB! The reason I use a FAT32 partition to store the images locally is because I use a bootable FAT16 partition to run the DOS Ghost client (Enterprise version 7.5). Why do we still use 7.5? Because Symantec doesn't have a better solution at the moment that our IT department feels would improve this situation. In normal usage the FAT32 partition is hidden using the XOSL boot loader (which is password-protected so the students can't mess it up). XP and Windows Server can't unhide the partitions hidden with XOSL. I realize this is not the best solution from a security perspective, but I work with the constraints I'm given. No offence taken, but you are not my boss, either! There are two reasons why I keep a local partition that stores Ghost images; 1) the students can quickly do a clean Ghost restore of the OS they wish to use in their lab; 2) IT has restricted the bandwith of the Ghostcast server to 10Mb/s for network performance reasons. As an example, at this rate a 29GB XP image takes about 3.5 hours to restore.

[Marsden11]

Question 1- Why is your XP image 29GB??Question 2- You are running Win2003 Server but using a 3rd party to hide partitions when you could be storing on NTFS partitions and assigning permissions. Stick a floppy in the affected machine, run a script and grab the permission protected network share. Why the hard way?Question 3- Are you using AD and Group Policy? That can be configured to update when the user logs off at the end of the day and when he/she comes in the next morning... the machine is sporting a clean image.It also sounds like you are not using Volume Shadow Copy on the Win2K3 server which could drastically speed up restores since your XP images could be drastically shrunk to just a couple of GBs.If I was supporting students, the XP image would be as small as possible and any apps would be on a beefy server running terminal services so that students could blow their machines every day and the IT impact would be slight.Another possibility would be Virtual Machine images. Students could bugger a VM and bam, machine gets a new VM image at the end of the day. Heck of a lot smaller than 29GB! Go a step further and lock the XP machines down to just the VMs and nothing else. Choose the particular VM for the specific class and eliminate the need for a complete image restore. Again, smaller than the 29GB XP image.

[Guest LilBambi]

I have an 80G WD and a 120G Seagate I'd like to use as bulk storage in some 98SE computers. I know Win98 can only address about 8G at a time. OTOH you can supposedly sidestep that with a PCI IDE card that ups your native capability to 137G, so I hear. I have such a card, a Promise Ultra 100 tx2. I also have access to partitioning software (Partition Magic, BootitNG) and imaging software (Drive Image, BootitNG).When one first addresses a mint HD directly on an IDE buss in Win98, one can fdisk it to about 8G (or 10G or so, according to a recent experiment I ran). I could probably slap a copy of Windoze on such a disk (if necessary), and/or later use Partition Magic to 'slide' the total active area on the disk out to the limits, partition it in 8G chunks, and maybe dump the OS later, ending up with just the full HD as bulk storage (no active partitions). Does that sound about right? I'm really looking for a faster, cleaner way of ending up with this result without all the intermediate steps. What I do know is that Windows can't 'see' the mint HD looking through the PCI IDE card unless it has been Fdisked and probably formatted as well- other than the Promise software does briefly detect the full size of the HD while it is loading its BIOS. Suggestions? I hear that the IDE card can provide a performance boost over directly addressing the HD over an IDE buss. I'm still a little fuzzy as to just what this card can and can't do for me.I'm just now coming out of my own personal era of smaller drives, where 30G has been considered 'large'. I always chopped those up into 8-10G partitions in the past. I assume I would still have to do that, even looking through the IDE card? My old P2 box has a 30G Maxtor and that one was installed using "EZ-BIOS" software from Maxtor. It's supposed to be some sort of 'spanning' software that fools Win98 into thinking it's only addressing 8G (?) I think I have that one partitioned in three 10G chunks anyway.BTW these questions are intended as a Win98 query, so you guys who are tempted to tease me about getting XP will be cheerfully ignored.

If you wish to stray into other discussions not related to the discussion at hand, please start another topic.Now on to the topic at hand....

[Cluttermagnet]

Siiiighhhh!Er, ah, well, I started this thread. Heh!Here I stand, hat in hand, and I'm still nearer to where I started than where I want to be. Again, the problem statement is- "How can I simply and easily format a new, large hard drive (80G and 120G) for use as secondary, bulk storage on a 98SE machine. The 'hard way', BTW, seemed to be to install (or clone) a copy of 98SE onto the new drive, then later format it into smaller chunks, sliding partitions around in size or number if necessary, and then delete the OS install (format that partition). The supposed 'easy way' was to get copies of the Seagate and WD install utilities and let them do it all at once.I just tried using the Seagate "Disc Wizard" on a 120G drive. Loads and works great, but the problem is that it wants to set the partition (entire 120G) as *Active*, whether or not I let it go on to install 98SE. This is not quite what I wanted. It was further possible to go on to write zeros to the first 63 sectors, using a different utility included with this software, but I take it this constitutes erasing the boot info, or in other words, is tantamount to 'erasing' the format just accomplished. Doh!! What I want the software to crank out is a 'logical' partition, not an active partition. (Am I making any sense?)If you can follow all this, what I'm essentially wanting is to use any of my 98SE computers just as I would with, say, a floppy disk. Pop a floppy in, erase it if necessary, full format it, remove it, then use it as fresh media in another machine. Win 98 does not make you accept the installation of *any* software on the floppy, or try to make the floppy 'active', etc. I'd like to format an entire 120G drive, but *not* install an OS and *not* make the big partition (or any partition on it) active. Then take that hard drive and slap it into another Windoze box as, say, the primary IDE slave drive- bulk storage. Unless someone can point out something I've missed here (entirely possible), I think I have to go with my roundabout fallback method, letting the utility clone 98SE onto the new drive. But I can't quite see my way clearly to the endpoint I desire. I do remember hearing that you can get your BIOS all upset and confused if you allow two drives, both set up as 'Active', to coexist on the same computer without using some sort of boot utility. So I'm obviously going to be rebooting to the 98SE startup disc, changing jumpers, etc. I'm quite OK with all that. But this is not the 'simple' method I was looking for. Nope, it feels a bit more like a Rubik's cube. Heh! Any more ideas?

Edited February 22, 2006 by Cluttermagnet

[Cluttermagnet]

One last comment-Peachy, you did mention that Win98 fix which addresses the hard drive size reporting. I looked into that and did download a copy. They advised, in essence, to not use it if you really don't need it. OK. So far, I haven't used it. But I do know that fdisk can indeed accomplish all that I need to, formatting and partitioning. But Partition Magic is certainly a lot easier to work with (for the neophyte, anyway). Thus, the insane machinations with cloning Windoze only to use it to operate on the new drive, then dumping that OS copy later. I'm still open to suggestions. In no rush at all here.

[Cluttermagnet]

congrats! your here.

Congrats, Temmu! You're ever the witty linguist...

[Specmon]

Clutter,Download Bootit NG, run the installer (this is the free trial)The installed program lets you put the Bootit program on a floppy. This floppy is fully functional and not time limited.The floppy will do PRECISELY what you are looking to do. First screen on the floppy offers to install the Boot Manager on your hard drive. Click past that to the next screen, and select Partition work.From there you can make all the adjustments you asked for.Starting with a dead empty drive....CREATE "your" primary partition to whatever size you want from free space. The primary FAT32 drive is type 12/Ch if active. Anyway, from the MBR view, you can change active to inactive to your hearts content.Then from the Partition Work view again, CREATE "your" logical drive, using however much space you want, type 5/Fh I believe. Then within the logical drive create what ever and how many ever drives you want. Those drives are of type 11/Bh. There is also the option to FORMAT all these drives as you create them, and Bootit format is REALLY fast. Is easy. The help files are a bit cryptic, but all you need to know IS there.Once you have set all this up, as long as you haven't installed the boot manager onto the drive, you won't need the Bootit floppy again unless you want it to do drive imaging. And it does that exceedingly well.Oh, and you can do this while the drive is in any machine, say as a slave in your Win98SE machine. The blank drive would show up in Bootit as HD1, with your first drive with the OS showing as HD0Check it out. "You're" gonna luv it. Tom

Edited February 22, 2006 by Specmon

[zlim]

Cluttermagnet, are all your computers running 98SE?I ask because to format a drive, I installed it as a slave into my 2K computer and formatted it, then put it into a 98SE computer.I'm getting this http://www.cyberguys.com/templates/searchd...&search=&child=so I can avoid the step of putting in the 2K computer. I can attach a drive via a USB port and format it using the Admin Tools and then install it anywhere I wish.

[Jeber]

That's nearly what I was thinking, Liz. Using a friend's computer running 2K or XP, attach the new HD as a slave to the IDE cable. You don't even need to mount it in the case, just connect the power and IDE cable. Format it from the primary HD, disconnect it and reset the jumper, if you need to, and it's ready to go.I did something like this recently with a laptop HD. I got a new 100GB drive, put it in an external USB HD case, formatted it from my laptop and then transferred the files over from my current 40GB drive after installing the OS. Then disconnected it, installed it in my laptop and was good to go.

[Marsden11]

my bad

Edited February 22, 2006 by Marsden11

[Cluttermagnet]

Wow, great replies- thanks to everyone! I've been learning a lot new in this thread, guys.I'll remember that WinXP trick. I do have access to XP machines at friends' houses. Meanwhile, I'm going to try Tom's suggestion because I do have BootitNG, I'm fairly familiar with it, and I have all 98SE machines here. But I didn't know that particular trick with the bootable floppy. Neat!Bootit is a great program, BTW, and I'm going to purchase a seat or two, as I do see some multibooting machines in my future (eventually), containing the odd Linux distro as well as my familiar old Windows. Langa warned that it has a bit of a learning curve, but I read the documentation carefully and didn't have too much trouble making it work for partitioning and imaging right 'out of the box'. It's not really all that geeky. I'll report back with some results.

Edited February 22, 2006 by Cluttermagnet

[Jeber]

Aha, another future ATL poster!At least you'll know where to go for support.

[zlim]

Guess I'll need to take another look at BootIt. I looked at it a few years back and didn't quite "get it" so I bought Partiton Magic. But I have several computers so I'm always open to other choices.

[Cluttermagnet]

Starting with a dead empty drive....CREATE "your" primary partition to whatever size you want from free space. The primary FAT32 drive is type 12/Ch if active. Anyway, from the MBR view, you can change active to inactive to your hearts content.Then from the Partition Work view again, CREATE "your" logical drive, using however much space you want, type 5/Fh I believe. Then within the logical drive create what ever and how many ever drives you want. Those drives are of type 11/Bh. There is also the option to FORMAT all these drives as you create them, and Bootit format is REALLY fast. Is easy. The help files are a bit cryptic, but all you need to know IS there.

Hmmmmm...Nope, I'm still not getting it. I did all you describe, to the extent humanly possible, but it wasn't my experience that I could "change active to inactive to (my) hearts content." Nope. Wasn't that way at all. What am I missing? I did easily find the MBR View screen you describe. The only option button that even vaguely relates to active/inactive was a button labeled "Active". I could see no way whatever to set my newly created primary partition from active to inactive. Yep, this utility also wants to set partitions to active. And keep 'em that way. I've got to be missing something here, but what? BTW I found that fdisk is also biased towards having the partition active. I saw no option whatever for setting it inactive that way. BTW I was also successful in setting up the 'logical' drive you describe ('extended'?). I didn't proceed further to subdividing that one into any smaller logical partitions.Further fine detail- initially, the only option for a primary partition is type 11/Bh FAT-32. I chose it. The only option for an extended partition is 5/5h Extended. I chose that. After creating them, I found there were lots more types visible under Properties. In addition to 11/Bh FAT-32 there was also 12/Ch FAT-32. But I was initially only offered the first type as a choice. Also, my type 5/5h Extended selection gets changed to a type 15/Fh Extended, whatever that implies.Yes, Bootit formats really fast. It also starts to do a scan after making the partition, which is rather slow, but you can just blow by that. I did. And yes, the Help files are, er, 'cryptic' to say the least. I don't think their Help files are their greatest asset, let's say. Darned near useless, in fact, but the utility itself is just plain excellent! So I hope to learn to drive it eventually. Heh!

[Cluttermagnet]

Guess I'll need to take another look at BootIt. I looked at it a few years back and didn't quite "get it" so I bought Partiton Magic. But I have several computers so I'm always open to other choices.

Fred Langa lost his patience with Power Quest when their software started to get really bloated and was actually losing features in some ways. So when he found BootitNG he was very enthusiastic indeed. It combines all the features of a ton of other software costing several hundred bucks for a mere 35 bucks, and it is waaaaay smaller and it works way better. But he warned it is rather geeky and a lot of folks may not 'get it'. I think there must be a wicked learning curve with BootitNG, and their Help files are not very helpful. They do have a great .pdf file you can download that does a more than adequate job of hand holding as it walks you through drive imaging, partitioning, setting up multi boot drives, etc. But there must be a lot of undocumented or informally documented stuff that just gets passed around, as in this thread. I know of nothing written by the software authors that describes what the heck an "11/Bh FAT-32" or a "12/Ch FAT-32" partition type is. Maybe I've just overlooked it, but I've never seen it. There is much under the hood that is probably not well known, by virtue of not being in their help file or other documents. But *still* I like this software a *lot*.BTW I have copies of Partition Magic 4.0 and Drive Image 5.0. You can buy these reasonably on the internet. I found some on Ebay. DI5.0 was probably the peak for Power Quest. It does work in XP, too. But 6 was iffy and 7 was apparently such a dog that Fred Langa recommended passing on it. I really like my PM4 and DI5 a lot! They do the job. Power Quest got bought and is no longer in the business anyway. From all I hear, Bootit is pretty hard to beat in this area now.

[Marsden11]

And if you were running XP, all of this would be moot as you could do all of your formatting and configuring from Disk Management. Even create Dynamic disks and just pop them in and out.

[Specmon]

Clutter,Sorry, I wrote a lot of that from memory, so I went back and played with a drive doing what you wanted. I found that after creating the primary drive and the others, then going to "View MBR" that the primary drive was not yet active. It would stay that way unless I clicked the "Set Active" button while the partition was selected. Once selected, I was not able to reset to Inactive unless I canceled that view without "Apply" So the key is to just not set it active in the first place.

Further fine detail- initially, the only option for a primary partition is type 11/Bh FAT-32. I chose it. The only option for an extended partition is 5/5h Extended. I chose that. After creating them, I found there were lots more types visible under Properties. In addition to 11/Bh FAT-32 there was also 12/Ch FAT-32. But I was initially only offered the first type as a choice. Also, my type 5/5h Extended selection gets changed to a type 15/Fh Extended, whatever that implies.

And this is what I find also.

[Specmon]

I haven't checked this. but if you are setting up a blank drive with BootitNG and the drive is the only one in the machine (HD0), then Bootit might set the primary drive as active automatically. This doesn't happen if the drive in question is HD1.I say this because I noticed a switch in "Settings" of maintenance mode that says "Keep HD0 Active"And I found this in the Bootit Knowledge Base:

How to Manually Set a Partition "Active"To set a partition active using BootIt Next Generation do the following: 1. Boot from the BootIt NG Installation diskette. 2. Click the cancel button to enter "maintenance mode". 3. Click on the Partition Work button. 4. Click on the View MBR button. 5. Highlight the partition you want active and click on the Set Active button. 6. Click on the apply button. To prevent this in the future, be sure that the Keep HD0 Active option in BootIt NG is enabled.

I've only been playing with a blank drive as slave, (HD1) and the primary partition is generated in the inactive state. So this probably only comes up when you are partitioning a drive as the only one in a machine.

[lewmur]

Clutter,Sorry, I wrote a lot of that from memory, so I went back and played with a drive doing what you wanted. I found that after creating the primary drive and the others, then going to "View MBR" that the primary drive was not yet active. It would stay that way unless I clicked the "Set Active" button while the partition was selected. Once selected, I was not able to reset to Inactive unless I canceled that view without "Apply" So the key is to just not set it active in the first place.And this is what I find also.

Won't setting the right partition to "active" make ALL the others "inactive?"

[Specmon]

At least in Windows, there can only be one Active (visible) partition on a machine.Except as determined by the "Set HD0 as Active" switch in Settings, Bootit NG creates all partitions as inactive by default.I believe that if you have the Bootit NG boot manager installed as its own tiny partition, you could have several active partitions (and operating systems) although you may still need to keep all but one hidden.

[b2cm]

Won't setting the right partition to "active" make ALL the others "inactive?"

Yes. There's only one active flag. But this scenario won't even exist if all you are going to do is create a logical partition. That active flag applies only to primary partitions. This partitioning problem is simple. Just run a partitioning software pre-OS, delete all exisiting partitions on new disk, create extended/logical partition on that disk, and format that partition as FAT32. No need for cloning/copying of exisiting partitions, and for a boot manager.

[Specmon]

Clutter,What b2cm says here makes sense.You don't need a primary partition on the second drive, why make one?I haven't done this, and I don't have a drive that I can blank for a test, but I'll bet that when you CREATE with Bootit NG, you will be able to just create an Extended Partition right off the bat, using the whole drive, then break it into whatever size volumes you want, or leave it as one Logical Volume. Then there is no fuss about "active."Let us know if Bootit does this for you.

[Cluttermagnet]

I haven't checked this. but if you are setting up a blank drive with BootitNG and the drive is the only one in the machine (HD0), then Bootit might set the primary drive as active automatically. This doesn't happen if the drive in question is HD1.

Yes, I pretty much figured this out last night before I went to bed. An instance of Bootit being 'just too darned smart'. Heh! I will try the whole thing again, but this time in a machine where I also have another drive with an active 98SE partition on it. Indeed, I was operating on 'HD0' last night. Doh! I'll check back in shortly with my results. ("In a moment, the results of that trial...") ;)Er, ah- yes, I'd also figgered out to try putting only an Extended partition on the drive. Doh! Edited February 23, 2006 by Cluttermagnet

[zlim]

Wouldn't ya know it, I got the worst version of the lot. I have PM7 and got it to work on my laptop running ME and 2K and a flavor of linux with lilo loaded on the partition, not the mbr.Do two dogs cancel each other out? (ME and PM7)I had to get some non-existent support for an old product (I think 8 was out when I asked for help on 7 and of course they wanted me to buy an upgrade. I may be crazy but I'm not stupid. Why buy an upgrade when I'm not sure the version I had in my hands would ever be workable). I found some help and files for errors that I was getting. I saved all my notes, put the files on floppies and have the lot inside the PM manual soooo if I need to reinstall, I won't waste time trying to hunt for the same workaround.In my 98 tower, I put a 2nd hard drive and ran up against the problem you are facing - how to format a drive in a 98 computer. It originally was in a 95 computer and had some overlay software on it so the computer could use the entire 4 gigs. LOL I removed the overlay software and then the 95 upgraded to 98 and the other 98 computer could not see the drive.I finally had to cable it to my 2K to get the job done. When I saw the USB gizmo with power for both sizes of hard drives, CDs and DVDs, I knew that's what I needed.