Large Drives NT 4

[Guest]

I just purchased a WD 40 gig HD. I want to use the entire HD as one partition. I've seen it done before but I've only done this using Partition Magic which I don't want to use again. I've already read Microsoft's support blurb about SP4's Atapi.exe and this does not
solve the problem of the system partition being larger than 8 gig. I have an Iwill KA266-R mobo that has a bios that supports large HD's. Any suggestions?

 

[Guest]

You will not be able to use all 40 GB as one partition under NT 4.0.

According to Microsoft: "The only disk services available to the Boot Sector code at this stage of system boot up are provided by the BIOS INT 13 interface...... This limits the size of the system partition to 7.8 gigabytes regardless of which file system is used. "

See the following URL for the details: http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q114/8/41.asp

Note that Microsoft refers to the partition containing the boot files like NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM as the "system" partition. The "boot" partition is the partition with \WINNT and all the rest of the operating system files.

If you want to create partitions on the hard disk that are larger than the limits of 2 GB for FAT16 and 4 GB for NTFS on installation, you can install the drive as a secondary in a running NT system, then use Disk Administrator to create the partitions on the blank drive. Then transfer the drive to the new system as the primary drive and install NT on it into the existing partitions.

If you want to use the "whole" 40 GB as one big drive, here's a compromise.

When you install the 40 GB drive as a secondary, create 2 primary partitions as follows:

1) Partition #1 is FAT16. It is very small, a few MB (10 MB should be plenty). It is marked Active.
2) Partition #2 is NTFS. It takes up the rest of the drive (about 40GB).

Now when you put this drive in the new system and install NT on it, install NT to the big NTFS partition. Since the "system" partition is the small partition, it will still boot and you wind up with a system that has all your OS files and applications in one large NTFS partition.

JS

 

[ttaylor]

Another quick and dirty approach that I've been using is to simply boot from floppy. Follow the procedure in http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q119/4/67.ASP to build the boot floppy. Yeah, it's a little slower but SP6a is pretty stable and I usually only need to reboot when I've changed hardware or added software that requires it. The FAT16 approach has certain advantages, but I've had some difficulties when C: is not the system drive.

 

[peach]

<font color=blue>Good info, but I am not sure beam bum's overall goal is a good one.

Beach bum, you <i>should</i> have separate partitions for the OS/Appz and your files. I also run a sep partition for my SWAP or paging file.

Also, whats the beef with Partition Magic? I prefer to use the stand alon app from a floppy drive after booting to DOS (either through Caldera, Win98boot, or other) rather than installing it on the machine, but I have to say - it is a very handy app. I can partiion my hd with might before even installing the 1st os.

Oh yeah, pm also has great info on what you must do to properly setup your partitions to run 98/NT/Linux/etc.

<i><font color=blue>on company time....</i>

 

[NickM]

[Originally posted by JohnSloan: “<i>..If you want to create partitions on the hard disk that are larger than the limits of 2 GB for FAT16 and 4 GB for NTFS on installation..</i>”]

John, have you tried just ignore to bypass those 2 GB and 4 GB limitations during WinNT install ? And as a second stage after SP6a update also?
Actually, from the same Microsoft information page you refer, I quote:

<i>"FAT and HPFS both have internal limits of 4 GB due to the fact that they use 32-bit fields to store file sizes. NTFS uses 64-bit fields for all sizes, permitting its data structures to handle volumes up to 2^64 bytes (16 exabytes or 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 bytes).
This value is the theoretical limit for the NTFS file system. .....Currently Windows NT supports sector sizes up to 4 Kilobytes. With 4KB sectors, Windows NT can support a 16 terabyte partition. As new hardware or software schemes become available, NTFS will be able to handle substantially larger volume sizes."</i>

I agree what you recommend about creating one small BOOT partition first. What about if not too small? probably..... Anyway, the idea, everything looks good to me.

 

[NickM]

[Originally Posted by beach_bum :”<b>I just purchased a WD 40 gig HD. I want to use the entire HD as one partition. I've seen it done before but I've only done this using Partition Magic which I don't want to use again. I've already read Microsoft's support blurb about SP4's Atapi.exe and this does not
solve the problem of the system partition being larger than 8 gig. I have an Iwill KA266-R mobo that has a bios that supports large HD's. Any suggestions?</b>” ]

Dear beach_bum:
It would be easier if you provided some design concept on your WinNT system based on your computing needs. It's normal way to start from.
Instead of the only-one-partition harddrive I would rather listen to and follow what JohnSloan and Peach recommend on partitioning. Even if probably you're going to develop/collect some big files (video/audio, just guessing don't matter), I think there'll be enough space left.

To have a separate BOOT/System partition(s) is very common for WinNT and not only. When data are stored separatly from the system, in some cases of harddrive crashes it's much easier to save/recover your important data and even restore everything after fomatting just only boot/system partition.
The NT doesn't like and doesn't allow much tricks, and it is a powerful strong OS with its rules we have to obey. Otherwise, it's like looking for trouble.

 

[NickM]

QUOTE][Originally Posted by beach_bum :”<b>....but I've only done this using Partition Magic which I don't want to use again....</b>

Something wrong with the Partition Magic?
[EDITED:
"PowerQuest Corp. is leading developer of hard disk management software for network servers and desktop computers..."<A HREF="http://www.powerquest.com" target="_new">htt://pwww.powerquest.com</A>
Hmm..No trust anymore? Probably tight competition is the case..

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by NickM on 07/26/01 01:09 AM.</EM></FONT></P>