FAT32 a real hangup

[ancient]

Hi

Need a little advice - Since getting involved with this dvd stuff
I realised my limitations
That is with win98se and fat 32 a 4gb file restriction
OK
So using shrink and decrpter i stuck to the file method

Now i need to have a larger hard drive but I am informed that
win98se fat 32 has a limit on this as well

Anyone know what size i can go upto ???

If i buy bigger is it possible to partition the new hard drive
into segmente within the limit and it will work

please advise this newbie

regards

[ancient]

Hi again
Forgot to mention
If i upgrade windows from 98se - which i am happy with
(homeuser - only needed)
Which one should i go for to use the ntfs system
Tried ME and it just didnt work for me

regards

[Dubber]

Hi, I'd recommend going with Win2K or XP as 2K may not be readily available to you. Both use NTFS and file limit won't bother you anymore.

As far as harddrive size, buy whatever you find reasonable, 80, 120, 160GB.... just keep in mind that some older systems' BIOS/IDE controller may not recognize drives beyond 126/137GB.

And - yes, you will be able and recommended to split HD into partitions, I usually use 3 partitions on Primary Master HDD as I use dual-boot PC; but you can have only one or two, used for: 1) the system and programs, data; 2) data/backups.

[ancient]

Many Thanx

Dubber

I'm off to my motherboard manufacturer now
to find out about the limiton hd formatting

[gmatov]

Ancient,

You can go to MS and download a new version of the Command file which will allow you to up date your boot disk to allow large drives.

It allows fdisk and format of over 64 gig drives.

It is file 263044USA8 . Do a search and you'll find it. It's under large drives.

Fdisk would formerly not see 64 gigs, a 100 gig would allow only 36 gigs. The new boot disk sees large drives.

I'm with you on 98, more than adequate for a home user, tho' I also have W2k: I prefer 98, and the 4 gig has never really hindered me. Most cap programs will automatically break files to less than 4 gigs, and a "rip" will make VOBs 1 gig, 1,048 megs.

I run 98 and 120 and 160 gig drives and see the full capacity. Why buy XP just to get large drive ability when you still need a patch to see over 137 gigs?

A warning now, the first time I used it, it did not go to 6 digits. It fdisked maybe 97 000 megs till I got to less than 100,000 megs (gigs) then saw the true balance and was no problem thereafter..

[ancient]

maany thanx to you too
gmatov

gues i'm off to ms now for iupgrade

[theDruid]

Partition Magic (PM) is well worth a look for managing large disks & partitions.

FDISK will be able to set up your partitions on FAT32 drives, but it's not very useful if you want to resize partitions once you've been using them for a while - as it needs to delete everything in the partitions before moving/resizing them.

PM doesn't need to do this - you can alter the sizes of your partitions whenever you want, without destroying the data within them.

I think there's a freeware partition manager that I've seen: http://www.webattack.com/get/ranish.html

I've no idea how good it is, but it looks like it can do more than FDISK alone. There's an FAQ for it here: http://www.ranish.com/part/faq.htm

cheers,
mcdruid.

[Jester700]

If you go to Win2k or WinXP, hold off on the partition magic. The newer OSes have disk management built in, and may be sufficient.

I just went from 2k to XP, and I like it. I'd take either one over any previous OS, although I really don't like the fisher-price look of XP. I'm using the "classic" theme, but it's still too pretty...

[Dubber]

There is one and only feature of XP I like - Remote Desktop :P