Over the weekend I decided to set up a network server to dump my audio data to, and bought a new Western Digital 80 gig hard drive. Since almost everything I was going to copy to it was on my Win 98SE DAW, I temporarily installed the drive into my DAW to copy the files. I ignored the WD setup disk (always avoid Disk Manager!) and used FDisk to partition the drive. Thing was, FDisk insisted that my 80 gig drive was only 10 gigs.
I tried a bunch of stuff, then when all else failed searched the Microsoft support files. It turns out that the FDisk program included in Windows 98 and 95 can't deal with drives > 64 gigs. It veiws them as a size = drive size - 64. Something about old 16 bit code in the program. Anyways you can download an updated version of FDisk which fixes the issue. Windows Millenium and beyond doesn't have this problem.
Now before you Win 2000 and XP owners start laughing, there is another problem that effects you too. It turns out that the Format command in ALL Microsoft products, including 2000 and XP, has a less sever bug dealing with >64 gig drives. When you begin formating it will misreport the drive size using the same size-64=result formula. However although the size will be misreported, it WILL actually format the drive properly to its full size. Another situation of old leftover 16 bit code. Interestingly if you format the drive from within Windows Explorer the problem doesn't occur.
And in case anyone is still using Windows 95, hard drives > 32 are a BIG SORRY, they are not supported with no fix planned. But if you are still using W95 you deserve your miserable fate!
Anyone wishing to read the gory technical details can consult Microsoft support docs # Q263044, Q263045, and Q246818 at the site below.
http://search.support.microsoft.com
Now I just have to figure out my next problem, which is that as soon as I installed the 80 gig drive my existing Maxtor 40 gig started freaking out, with surface errors popping up all over the place. Drive jealousy perhaps?
I tried a bunch of stuff, then when all else failed searched the Microsoft support files. It turns out that the FDisk program included in Windows 98 and 95 can't deal with drives > 64 gigs. It veiws them as a size = drive size - 64. Something about old 16 bit code in the program. Anyways you can download an updated version of FDisk which fixes the issue. Windows Millenium and beyond doesn't have this problem.
Now before you Win 2000 and XP owners start laughing, there is another problem that effects you too. It turns out that the Format command in ALL Microsoft products, including 2000 and XP, has a less sever bug dealing with >64 gig drives. When you begin formating it will misreport the drive size using the same size-64=result formula. However although the size will be misreported, it WILL actually format the drive properly to its full size. Another situation of old leftover 16 bit code. Interestingly if you format the drive from within Windows Explorer the problem doesn't occur.
And in case anyone is still using Windows 95, hard drives > 32 are a BIG SORRY, they are not supported with no fix planned. But if you are still using W95 you deserve your miserable fate!
Anyone wishing to read the gory technical details can consult Microsoft support docs # Q263044, Q263045, and Q246818 at the site below.
http://search.support.microsoft.com
Now I just have to figure out my next problem, which is that as soon as I installed the 80 gig drive my existing Maxtor 40 gig started freaking out, with surface errors popping up all over the place. Drive jealousy perhaps?