98 Guy wrote:

> "Formatting 41,86.65M"

>

> That's when I left the computer (running at my office).

> I wasn't going to hang around for an hour while it formatted

> the drive. I'll check back later today and see how it

> finished the job.

 

Ok, here's the result:

 

Formatting 41,86.65M

Format complete.

Writing out file allocation table

Compete.

Calculating free space (this may take several minutes)...

Complete

System tranferred

 

Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?

 

238,414.41 MB total disk space

360,448 bytes used by system

238,414.07 mb available on disk

 

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.

7,629,249 allocation unites available on disk.

 

Ok, looks good. Let's try chkdsk c:

 

244,136,352 kilobytes total disk space

244,135,968 kilobytes free

 

32,768 bytes in each allocation unit

7,629,261 total allocation units on disk

7,629,249 available allocation units on disk

 

Ok, still looks good. Let's try Scandisk c:

 

Scandisk ran just fine, performed all checks except surface scan.

 

Running scandisk without himem.sys being loaded results in this

message:

 

"Scandisk is unable to check a drive because there

is no extended memory driver loaded on your computer.

To check this drive, make sure that you have a

HIMEM.SYS file on the disk from which you are starting

your computer (...)"

 

Ok, so there you go. You can use standard tools like fdisk and format

to prepare drives up to 250 gb in size and set them up for

windows-98se installation.

 

From this point on, I don't want to hear any lusers out there in some

future post say something like "uh, I don't think that fdisk works on

drives larger than 50 gb, or maybe it's 64" or "I seem to recall that

you can't use win-98 format to format a drive larger than 80 gb" or

some other such nonsense.

 

And to Ssome (the OP who I think started this thread in

microsoft.public.win98.performance) - I hope this helps...

98 Guy wrote:

> 98 Guy wrote:

>

>> "Formatting 41,86.65M"

>>

>> That's when I left the computer (running at my office).

>> I wasn't going to hang around for an hour while it formatted

>> the drive. I'll check back later today and see how it

>> finished the job.

>

> Ok, here's the result:

>

> Formatting 41,86.65M

> Format complete.

> Writing out file allocation table

> Compete.

> Calculating free space (this may take several minutes)...

> Complete

> System tranferred

>

> Volume label (11 characters, ENTER for none)?

>

> 238,414.41 MB total disk space

> 360,448 bytes used by system

> 238,414.07 mb available on disk

>

> 32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.

> 7,629,249 allocation unites available on disk.

>

> Ok, looks good. Let's try chkdsk c:

>

> 244,136,352 kilobytes total disk space

> 244,135,968 kilobytes free

>

> 32,768 bytes in each allocation unit

> 7,629,261 total allocation units on disk

> 7,629,249 available allocation units on disk

>

> Ok, still looks good. Let's try Scandisk c:

>

> Scandisk ran just fine, performed all checks except surface scan.

>

> Running scandisk without himem.sys being loaded results in this

> message:

>

> "Scandisk is unable to check a drive because there

> is no extended memory driver loaded on your computer.

> To check this drive, make sure that you have a

> HIMEM.SYS file on the disk from which you are starting

> your computer (...)"

>

> Ok, so there you go. You can use standard tools like fdisk and format

> to prepare drives up to 250 gb in size and set them up for

> windows-98se installation.

>

> From this point on, I don't want to hear any lusers out there in some

> future post say something like "uh, I don't think that fdisk works on

> drives larger than 50 gb, or maybe it's 64" or "I seem to recall that

> you can't use win-98 format to format a drive larger than 80 gb" or

> some other such nonsense.

>

> And to Ssome (the OP who I think started this thread in

> microsoft.public.win98.performance) - I hope this helps...

 

Good for you. I have been using up to 160G drives for several years now

with no problems with scandisk. I also have a raid 5 system set up on

W98se with 5 x 160G WD drives - 600+G combined space partitioned into 5

sections. So far, again over 2 years, no problems other than one drive

failing. At that time I rebooted on a broken array and ran normally

until the replacement drive was ready and let the system rebuild the

broken array over the weekend. That happened about 2 months after

setting up the system and it has been flawless since. I run 2 old

W95's, they do what they did well then to this day, 2 W98se with one as

the server & 2 W2k's as workstations doing the grunt work. Soon a

couple of the other L-OS machines will be added to perform additional

grunt type jobs. No significant problems in over 2 years other than the

one physical drive failure. Just lucky I guess.

 

BTW you did a great job explaining to those new to disk allocations & if

you know of a place describing why there should be some smaller

partitions in addition to some larger ones for the purpose of improved

disk space usage this would be a good place to direct them to it. I

have not had the need to search for an article but if you do not have

one available I will try to find one and add the link here.

 

Good proof of concept.

 

James