Hi, I saw this question posted earlier in a google search, although for some reason the forum said the thread was 'too old', so I would not be able to post. Bollucks! Use external USB 2.x drive enclosures. Re: Use 250gig (or any over 137 gb) drives in Win98SE No one has mentioned this yet. In some of these posts, your startup drives are 80 gigs, which is fine and fast and should be able to hold all the applications, temporary storage, and OS needs. A solution: Nice, aluminum, USB 2.x drive housings for IDE internal drives cost about 25 dollars, or 25 euros. If your machines DO NOT have USB 2.x ports, this works, just slower. To speed it up, a PCI-to-USB, 4 or 5 port, card can be had for 15 euros or dollars. I recommend an NEC-based PCI-to-USB card (look on the card at the printing on the top of the biggest chip). One can do the same thing with Firewire/IEEE 1394. With USB housings, the IDE drive must be jumpered as Master, setup as a single large partition, and for Win98SE, formatted FAT32, BEFORE it will work in the USB housing. The initial partition setup and format of the 250gig drive, if it's possible, open the computer, switch the main drive with the new 250gig drive, boot an OS* from CD, and prep the drive, then power down the computer and switch the drives back, and put the 250gig in the external USB enclosure. * Since the problem is with Win98SE and 250gig support, another OS via Bootable CD makes more sense (i.e. W2K, XP, or Bootable Linux disk like Unbuntu Live, or the 'Utimate Boot CD'). With W2K, use http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=75713 XP works, as does a 2003 boot CD. If you want to use another CD-based OS, it has to, regardless of the BIOS limitations, recognize a 250 gig drive completely. Almost all OS's load some kind of IDE driver (which then understands drives over 137gb). Additionally, OS's either natively use 48-bit addressing or require a patch to understand 48-bit addressing (48bit = drives over 137gb). In addition to not natively recognizing 250gig drives, sometimes a computers BIOS hangs on startup when an unrecognizably big drive is connected to the IDE cable. Manually set BIOS as if it was a smaller drive. The computer is not from the unrecognizably large drive, so as the CD OS loads, the dynamically changing drive geometry does not matter.

It is far easier to buy a PCI ATA Controller Card with on-board BIOS to overcome the limitation and cheaper!

It seems as though this forum has started to become a "dumping ground" since 98SE went EOL. All sorts of "wizardry" facets are coming out. As Fats Domino would say; "Ain't That A Shame". It's a good day when you learn something

I agree with inverto. Especially if the MBoard doesn't support USB2. There are sound reasons to use an external connect though.

For sure, pedantry abounds. It seems the EOL has brought forth two kinds of posters: the panic stricken "what will we do now?" types and the (previously unheard from) 'past masters' That's just... great - it can only be a matter of time before we start getting the "why do you folks still use Win9x?" questions (much like the DOS & Win31 forums endure) You are, once again, Microsoft's bitch

Oh dear, oh woe unto the hills... The anno 2006 is past its prime and soon to be drawing to an end... T'will finish at midnite December 31st... Support for my chalk and slate was withdrawn eons ago; will it now mean the same for my pen and pencil sets? Woe is me and how shall I cope in this age of spray-paint and marker pens...

Maybe posters making such comments (in any forum) should have "INFO ONLY:" before the subject line topic? "If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." - BILL CLINTON