Win98se and large HDD

[Etruscan]

Hi All

I'm adding a large HDD [120gb] to a Win98se machine. Does anyone know if there is any problem with 98se recognizing or creating partitions on drive this large?

[gerald_weigel]

I put a 120GB HDD in my Win98SE box, no problems. You don't have problems with that until you get upwards of 140GB(approximatly). Even then you can do it, can't remember how though. I read about it in the instructions for my HDD(maxtor).

[Tomteriffic]

If you do run into any difficulties, it would be with using a Win98SE boot disk to format and partition the drive. The version that's on there chokes up at about 60 GB. I'm not at home, so I don't have the link handy, but MS has posted a fix for that that, once installed, will make a boot disk capable of handling drives up to 130 GB or so. 3rd party utilities ought to work just fine, though.

[J-Excel]

You can format with a Win98 ME bootdisk from www.bootdisk.com too.

[Soheils91]

hmmm, i miss 98se for some reason, maybe its the lack of bugs.
I am not really enjoying this whole windows xp experience.
shiza.

[gerald_weigel]

I used the Maxtor utility disk that came with my drive, and everything worked flawless. I don't know if other HDD manufacturers have similar utilities or not. Of course, I bought mine retail (only $70, after rebate though).

[Etruscan]

Thanks for the replies. Yeah, I was just going to try and FDISK it in DOS with the DOS that comes with 98se. I guess that won't work - thought so. I'll make sure I get a utility disk with the drive or look around at Microsoft or the manufacturer's site's for means to partition and format it. Yes, gerald_weigel, I agree; I can't say enough good things about Maxtor's disk preparation utilities. They are excellent. I am just not sure that I'm going to be able to get a Maxtor at the lowest price.

[paul9]

lack of bugs that's the funniest thing i've come across today
i'd make a one or two gb primary active partition and bung the system on that and split the rest of the drive into whatever size partitions you need for data. this will speed up defrags on the system by not defragging huge video or whatever files when all you need is a defrag on the windows files. also consider using a separate partition for your program files and then the system pertition can be even smaller and faster. try to keep your system partition under 2 gb as i believe that one of the "awkward" boundary points lie about there and one at about 8 gb. these boundaries shouldn't cause any real problems unless you like to put a lot of operating systems on your drive, then some of the bootloaders may start to fail.

[gerald_weigel]

http://www.techimo.com/forum/t79689.html

shahani has a couple of Maxtor drives for sale, ceck it out, they'll probably go fast.

[billniceguy]

horray someone else uses 98se...i love it, put on many machines, and put it on a 120 gig on one of mine no problem. I hate xp...had it on one of my boxes and after 1 week put back 98se...98se is tech friendly, and xp is end user friendly.