Take jams advice and carefully read all sections referring to Win98 and 48bitLBA. Also, I would recommend the Controller card AND partitioning. Note the section concerning scandisk and other native Win98 utilities. Avoid problems by keeping the size below 127GB. Simply use 50% for each of two partitions. Altering cluster size outside the norms will also cause problems when running Win98 utilities.

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[1] I would not partition then change controllers; that's beggibg for problems. [2] 98 is limited to about 63G but the newer fdisk will go to about 137G. Beyond that, I dunno. DAVEINCAPS, I carved a 300 into roughly thirds with w2000 NTFS. What am I missing here? ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

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What DAVEINCAPS was thinking of was that when using NT versions of windows they will not allow you to create and format FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. The work around for that is to create the partitions outside of that environment.

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Hi OtheHill, You're tight in saying NT won't do FAT > 32. I wonder if a FAT > x created with DOS would cause trouble in NT. I have one about 38g which has run for years. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

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M2 What I was referring to was Win2000 & WinXP. Should have been more specific. Windows 2000/XP won't, by default, allow a partition over 32GB to be formatted FAT32. I will however, mount an existing FAT32 partition larger than 32GB.

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Hi OtheHill, I should have been more clear. Is there a size above which 2k will mount and "use" a FAT but eventually corrupt it? ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

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Yeah, I misspoke. It's XP that doesn't like fat32 partitions larger than 32 gig. Above that they should be NTFS. Here the microsoft link on that: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314463

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M2 I believe the answer to that is 137GB, same as Win98. I think that is covered at the 48bitLBA site. I am not real sure about that though. When using partition magiic there are some warnings about altering cluster sizes in FAT32. I do know this, I have a 300GB external drive formatted FAT32 because I dual boot Win98/2000. I was in Win2000 with this external drive running and Win2000 did an outo update, rebooting my machine. The default OS is Win98, so when it restarted my drive letters were shifted and Scandisk started running. When I came back into my offfice and saw what had happened I stopped the scan. I had many recorded TV shows on there and some of them became corrupted and lockup any computer I try to play them on. This behavior is mentioned at the 48bitLBA site and IMO reason enough not to create partitions larger than 137GB/127actual. http://www.48bitlba.com

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Hi OtheHill & DAVE, Good info. I don't need a controller now. [My biggest drive is 40G LOL] But for planning purposes, any reco? We used to sell PROMISE RAID cards that were quite good and very reasonable. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

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To Connieleemarie, make sure the PCI card you purchase is '48 bit LBA' capable. There are lots of PCI cards out there that aren't. Do yourself a favor BACKUP!

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Some promise cards won't run optical drives either. That may not be an issue for you but the assumpion is they should.

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Well worth keeping in mind. TY If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

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Go to my website (Homepage link) and look up the section titled Working with Large Hard Drives (Barriers and Limits). Hopefully this will arm you with the correct information and help you make the right decision on how to proceed for your specific circumstances. Hope it helps. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

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