KT7A-RAID + 300GB Maxtor + Win98SE = no joy :(

Hope is out there since I have been running the HPT454 in Raid 5 since
November of 2004. 5 wd160G drives, W98se updated to 11/04 at the time
of original setup & regularly till M$ dropped support, AMDK6 1.3G,
768Mram, LAN originally 10/100nic now 10/100/1000 airlink nic,
partitions, Drive Q 191G, Drive R 95.6G, Drive S 95.6G, Drive T 95.6G,
Drive U 117G for 594.8G total of the 640G available. The balance 45G
+/- went to overhead. It would seem W98se does go beyond 120G when
updated to Nov. 2004 patches and beyond. Originally I formatted the
full 300G but setup smaller working partitions for better disk space
use. Small .dll files etc. take the full 16/32/64k of allocated space
regardless of the actual space needed. I use Dr.Q for the image files
of other drives on the LAN. Dr.S is the shared drive with Server shared
apps on that drive since not all workstations need all apps at the same
time. I had a drive failure in about July 05 and ran on the broken
array for about a week till the replacement could be installed. No data
loss & all smiles. BTW the HPT bios was not updated beyond the MFG bios
when installed.

I hope this gives hope.

James

MalcolmO wrote:
Hope that helps clarify that a bit.

Oh, I didn't find it unclear; I just went a different way because of the
circumstances I encountered.

Foolish/lazy
on Abit's part to not update the HPT controller bios in their last
bios for the board IMO.

No, no. Just each company letting the other have its due. Not at all
unusual or unreasonable.

BTW on my machine AMIBIOS has 32Bit mode available and is turned on.
HPT W98 driver files are dated 7/2/2003 on the factory floppy that
accompanied the daughter board. The W2k, ME & XP files are also 7/2/2003.

James

MalcolmO wrote:
Hope that helps clarify that a bit.

Oh, I didn't find it unclear; I just went a different way because of the
circumstances I encountered.

Foolish/lazy
on Abit's part to not update the HPT controller bios in their last
bios for the board IMO.

No, no. Just each company letting the other have its due. Not at all
unusual or unreasonable.

Note those are volumes, not disk size.

Again.. no, it's both! If you have a 137GB limit, it's the limit! You
can format the first 137 and then when you want to do the rest the tool
will tell you the drive's full.

MalcolmO wrote:
Note those are volumes, not disk size.


Again.. no, it's both! If you have a 137GB limit, it's the limit! You
can format the first 137 and then when you want to do the rest the tool
will tell you the drive's full.

OK, may be the disk limit, but Microsoft doesn't bother to say so
anywhere that I've looked.

As for formatting:
"In Windows 2000 and later versions, the operating system does not allow
any volumes larger than 32 GB to be formatted with FAT. (For hard disk
drive volumes larger than this, NTFS is a more suitable file system.)
The operating system will still mount FAT volumes larger than 32 GB.
However, in Windows 95 and Windows 98 there is no volume size limit
imposed by the Windows format (format.com) utility."
So fdisk may not partition beyond 137, but format doesn't have to stop
there.

But I thought the most interesting part was "Note that this limit is
lifted in Windows Me, Windows 2000, and later versions." I know the
WinME defragger works with Win98, I use it. There's no reason to assume
it can't do more than 137GB.

MalcolmO wrote:

Note those are volumes, not disk size.

Again.. no, it's both! If you have a 137GB limit, it's the limit! You
can format the first 137 and then when you want to do the rest the tool
will tell you the drive's full.

-terminology-

'Volume' and 'Partition" generally synonomous ...

'Disk' and 'HD' similar .

The "3rd_party" W98 OS_default drivers "can" raise the HD size barrier
to a 48bit LBA 'reach' ,
and
to the 'reach' of a =functioning= ptn_basher/format tool too .

At 'this' point the W98 FAT32 'limit' "2TB" partition is moot.

Qed

MalcolmO wrote:


....snip...

Malcome ,

Keep us posted *IF* you decide to try the drop_in HD 48bitlba drivers
....
W98 'users' can soon expect 120GB HDs to disappear from shelves ...
as are the 40/80GB HDs ...
then "what" ???

Qed.

0_Qed wrote:
MalcolmO wrote:
W98 'users' can soon expect 120GB HDs to disappear from shelves ...
as are the 40/80GB HDs ...
then "what" ???
Qed.

I'm a heavy Windows 98SE user and don't like to use bigger than 137GB
(128GB) harddisks with that O/S.
Some months ago I was experimenting with SATA and bought a PCI Serial
ATA card.
At the same time I bought a Hitachi 164GB SATA harddisk
(HDT722516DLA380) because that's the smallest they had in stock.
I discovered I could configure the disk to the capacity I wanted using
the downloaded Hitachi Feature Tool
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

Feature Tool (v2.03)
This is a DOS-bootable tool for changing various ATA features. The
Feature Tool allows you to control some of the features of our Deskstar
and Travelstar high performance ATA hard disk drives and supports 48-bit
addressing, so it will work with the new large capacity drives.

This version adds support for our latest drives. Changes include:

Enhancement of SATA support
Enhancement of Capacity Clip Function

The Feature Tool allows you to:
Enable or disable the read-ahead or write cache.
Change the drive Automatic Acoustic Management settings to the:
Lowest acoustic emanation setting (Quiet Seek Mode), or
Maximum performance level (Normal Seek Mode).
Change the predefined capacity of the drive. This option can be used in
situations where there is a BIOS limitation and the drive is not
recognized. See the Users Guide for specific details.
Switch the Ultra DMA mode
Change Advanced Power Mode - allows you to change between the lowest
power consumption and the highest power consumption (maximum performance
level).
Show Drive Temperature - shows the current drive temperature in Celsius
and Fahrenheit.
Configure SATA interface - adjust maximum speed and enable/disable
Spread Spectrum Clocking.

I know other brands use jumpers for capacity clipping!

["Followup-To:" header set to alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.abit.]
On 2006-09-11, MalcolmO wrote:
Note those are volumes, not disk size.

Again.. no, it's both! If you have a 137GB limit, it's the limit! You
can format the first 137 and then when you want to do the rest the tool
will tell you the drive's full.

It is a micro$oft problem. The "limit" also occur on the original
release of xp; the "fix" was done with sp1 because of m$ screwup.

The 160 gig wd drive I got came with a ide card & driver to correct
the m$ bug & that was how I got xp to install & access the entire
160 gig.

As for formatting:

Mine is FAT32, of course, and MaxBlast does the formatting.

But I thought the most interesting part was "Note that this limit is lifted in Windows Me,
Windows 2000, and later versions." I know the WinME defragger works
with Win98, I use it.
There's no reason to assume it can't do more than 137GB.

Except this bit from http://www.48bitlba.com/win98.htm :

Windows 98 and Me do not natively support 48-bit LBA drives larger than 137 GB.

I actually DL'd the WinME defragger and then discovered somewhere else
that it doesn't do 48-bit.

Keep us posted *IF* you decide to try the drop_in HD 48bitlba drivers

Dude, I have! It's the message that has FULL 300GB JOY in the subject line!