Max Win ME Hard Drive Size?

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
Win Me has problems with drives larger than 137GB due to not supporting
48-bit LBA (which was only partially implemented in XP SP1 (Sept? 2002)
and not fully until XP SP2 (August 2004).


Hi Mike!

Does the lack of 48-bit LBA mean:

1. That Win ME (and 98) can use hard drives larger than 137 MB, but that
only 137 MB will be recognized and available for use

- or -

2. That Win ME (and 98) will not even recognize drives larger than 137 MB,
and thus can not use them?

Could you please clarify how this works?

TIA,
O.J.

O.J. Newman wrote:

Hi Mike!

Does the lack of 48-bit LBA mean:

1. That Win ME (and 98) can use hard drives larger than 137 MB, but
that only 137 MB will be recognized and available for use

- or -

2. That Win ME (and 98) will not even recognize drives larger than
137 MB, and thus can not use them?


Worse, you can see the drive and everything appears hunky dory but the
moment anything gets written beyond the 137GB boundary rather than being
in that part of the disk it is written to and probably overwriting data
earlier in the disk,
--
Mike Maltby

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike M"
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.windowsme.general
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 6:17 AM
Subject: Max Win ME Hard Drive Size?


O.J. Newman wrote:

Hi Mike!

Does the lack of 48-bit LBA mean:

1. That Win ME (and 98) can use hard drives larger than 137 MB, but
that only 137 MB will be recognized and available for use

- or -

2. That Win ME (and 98) will not even recognize drives larger than
137 MB, and thus can not use them?


Worse, you can see the drive and everything appears hunky dory but the
moment anything gets written beyond the 137GB boundary rather than being
in that part of the disk it is written to and probably overwriting data
earlier in the disk,
--
Mike Maltby




Hi Mike:

Thanks for the response!

So can I use a larger hard drive, say 160 MB, but format it to no larger
than 137 MB and be safe?

Thanks again,
O.J.

By Format I am assuming you mean Partition.

That should work, assuming your motherboard bios can see the drive,
although personally I wouldn't really recommend it.
--
Mike Maltby



O.J. Newman wrote:

Thanks for the response!

So can I use a larger hard drive, say 160 MB, but format it to no
larger than 137 MB and be safe?

"Mike M" wrote in message
...
By Format I am assuming you mean Partition.

That should work, assuming your motherboard bios can see the drive,
although personally I wouldn't really recommend it.
--
Mike Maltby



O.J. Newman wrote:

Thanks for the response!

So can I use a larger hard drive, say 160 MB, but format it to no
larger than 137 MB and be safe?


Thanks again Mike!

O.J.

Can this problem be overcome with an LBA 48 controller card and a
driver?

There's no such limit on an external USB drive is there?

How about when Win ME is installed on a system with
SATA ports and ME drivers for those?

Isn't the sector wraparound problem just the result of
hardware that didn't have the most significant bit
(binary digit) implemented?

Didn't some hardware handle that bit just fine?

For completeness, would an SCSI controller/HD
have a counterpart of this LBA limitation?


To me, using Win ME for internet access, it seems
that the ideal boot drive size, generous enough
to hold browser, plugins, firewall, anti-spyware,
antivirus and have room for downloading would
be 4 GB. I would even advise that should be the
actual drive size and NOT a partition on a larger one.

Bigger than that I find slows down Virusscan,
scandisk(deep) and defrag more than it's worth.

By the very nature of a large hard disk it
will get maintained less often and that's bad.

How long would it take to run a deep scandisk
on a 137GB hard disk under Win ME?

Who's actually going to run a 10 hour virus scan,
a 20 hour scandisk or a 15 hour defrag?

( These kinds of issues don't go away
on Win XP or Vista, do they? )

Again, reading the entire thread might be of some benefit to you. 48 LBA
has to be supported both by the bios and the driver. Win Me has no such
driver.
--
Mike Maltby



Greegor wrote:

Can this problem be overcome with an LBA 48 controller card and a
driver?

There's no such limit on an external USB drive is there?

How about when Win ME is installed on a system with
SATA ports and ME drivers for those?

Isn't the sector wraparound problem just the result of
hardware that didn't have the most significant bit
(binary digit) implemented?

Didn't some hardware handle that bit just fine?

For completeness, would an SCSI controller/HD
have a counterpart of this LBA limitation?


To me, using Win ME for internet access, it seems
that the ideal boot drive size, generous enough
to hold browser, plugins, firewall, anti-spyware,
antivirus and have room for downloading would
be 4 GB. I would even advise that should be the
actual drive size and NOT a partition on a larger one.

Bigger than that I find slows down Virusscan,
scandisk(deep) and defrag more than it's worth.

By the very nature of a large hard disk it
will get maintained less often and that's bad.

How long would it take to run a deep scandisk
on a 137GB hard disk under Win ME?

Who's actually going to run a 10 hour virus scan,
a 20 hour scandisk or a 15 hour defrag?

( These kinds of issues don't go away
on Win XP or Vista, do they? )

There is no such problem with a SCSI drive.

On Apr 22, 1:17�pm, Greegor wrote:

For completeness, would an SCSI controller/HD
have a counterpart of this LBA limitation?