bigger then 2Mb partition in 98? And how to expand it...

DeVore

I have a mate who has an 8 Gb hard drive which for some unknown reason was partitioned by Dell into two drives.
One (C:) is 2Gb and the other (D:) is 6Gb.

Now, not suprisingly the C: is very close to being full... and the is pretty much empty.

Now... I have been told a few things (some contradictory)

1. that 98 can only address a 2gb disk (how is it then addressing the )

2. That 98 can only address a 2GB system disk (that makes a certain bit more sense... but is it true?)

3. That I just have to move the partition using something like Partition Magic... and all will be fine.

I REALLY super-do-not-want to **** this guys machine up as its important....

Any suggestions? Any good partition moving products out there if thats what I need!).

DeV.

seamus

Originally posted by DeVore
1. that 98 can only address a 2gb disk (how is it then addressing the )

2. That 98 can only address a 2GB system disk (that makes a certain bit more sense... but is it true?)

I don't know about 98, but I'm running 98SE. 4Gb primary partition, 4Gb extended partition, and all is hunky dory.

I installed 98SE on a 15Gig partition once and it worked fine, identified it as such, but I'm not sure what the limit is for it.

Mr. Fancypants

Depends on the file system...... FAT 16 has a 2.1GB limit. FAT 32 has a terrabyte limit from what i remember.
FAT16 came from the Windows95 days but could very well be running on the 98 system. There should be a FAT32 converter somewhere in admin tools.
You will need something like Partition Magic to get rid of/repartition the partitions though.

Hope that helps.

SickBoy

Dev, partition magic should work. I'd recomend though that you make a ghost image of the entire drive before you go messing with PM as it's known for making a complete mess of a hard drive is used incorrectly...
Incidently, mbroaders is right regarding the partition sizes.

bricks

Would've got a quicker response but however....

On Windows 98 (All versions) you can have over 8GB FAT32 partitions.
You should check and see if the C: drive is FAT16 first.
Right click on the drive and get properties and Look where it says filesystem. I'd bet on C: its FAT16 and on it'd have to be FAT32.
You mentioned this machine is important, only probably is that re-partitioning is a risky business at the best of times.
Here's how it could be done tho (With Partition Magic):

(1) Take full backup off all important files. (2nd HDD or CDR perhaps?)
(2) Then boot up off a Win98 boot disk and run partition magic.
(3) Delete partition and expand the c: drive out to full 8 gig length. It will convert it to FAT32 as part of this expanding process.
(4) Use Defrag in Windows.

The other option is to use the utility that comes with windows98 to convert the C: drive to FAT32 and this should free up some space on C: because FAT32 is more efficent.

longword

Partition Magic is commercial software, but there's a handy tool in the free world that'll do it. GNU parted

Typedef

DeV here is what you do.

Remove everything from .

Defragment C:. <== That is very important.

Then use fips or perhaps the Linux Mandrake CD (if you have it) to resize the partition.

You will have to change the partition type to FAT32, as opposed to FAT16.

Inspector Gadget

1) Always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, back up everything before you mess with partitions. All it takes is a power cut or a program crash to nuke everything. I've been reminded of that as recently as last night... I've spent the day trying to rescue a CVS repository off a corrupted drive (and it worked! yay! )
2) The only other limit I can think of that you might hit (not on an 8GB drive, mind...) is that the Windows 98 installer won't create FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB - I can't remember whether it tells you it can't, or wanders off and does it wrong, but there's a definite issue there.

Also, as far as I remember, there was a period when FAT32 came out that it was being treated with some suspicion by most people - primarily because the disk management tools of the day (many of which have been mentioned in this thread already) had at best only experimental or incomplete support for FAT32, so the recommendation at the time was to use FAT16 on your bootable partition (C: ) and it was up to you for the remainder of the disk.

HTH,
Gadget
(/me's off to have a closer look at parted now...)

DeVore

Thanks for the help guys. Any clues on what the FAT16->32 conversion tool is called in 98 or where I'd find it? (had a brief look around but nothing jumped out at me!)

Other then that I will follow the sage advice given here and use PM (which I have a copy of) as its never failed me yet. (/me touches wood.... mmmm woood....:) )

DeV.

maxheadroom

It is called - rather unimaginatevely - driveconvert, and it should be in acessories=> system tools. If it isn't, you'll need to install it in Add/Remove Programs => Windows Components.


Dunno if PM can do this non-destructively though

Felix Unger

I have a 40GB FAT32 partition on C: using WIN98 SE, no problems
so far, and an 80GB FAT32 partition on . The only downside is the amount of wasted space used by each cluster I would imagine, but I just prefer the simplicity of a single partition on each drive.


Felix Unger

Kix

According to the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Windows 98 supports FAT32 partitions up to 127GB. I know this is true because I have several 98 machines with 120GB drives with a single partition. However, in my experience 98 fdisk can not create these massive partitions, I've had to use WinME fdisk to do it. 98 can then format the drive fine after that within Windows. *

The documentation says Windows 2000 can only handle FAT32 partitions up to 32GB because of a limitation in the format utility. I don't know for sure but I suspect if you popped a preformated FAT32 disk with a 120GB partition into a Win2k machine it would probably access it fine.

K


* Spare me cluster size arguments. The drives mainly store a small number of massive data files.

ozpass

If I remember rightly, Norton Ghost has the option to write an image using a different filesystem. You could back up your 2Gb partition (assuming it's FAT16) to another HD, then put it back as whatever sized FAT32 whilst having backed everything up in the process (effectively killing 2 birds with one stone).

Also you can push FAT16 out to 4Gb (a la NT4) by using a 64K cluster size although this inevitably leads to much wasted disk space.

Typedef

To convert the FS to FAT32 Windows 95 had a tool to do that.

I think that you will have to convert the partition id type, ie there are different partition types for FAT16 and FAT32.

It is possible to change a partition's id, 'without' nuking the information on that particular partition, so that shouldn't be an issue.

For example the partition id for normal Linux partitions is 0x82 and for swap is 0x83, again, changing a partition's id does not affect information stored on the partition. All that is relevant for your problem here is that, to get Windows to address the partition as FAT32, said partition must have a partition type of FAT32.

In any case, I have used fips for this sort of thing before. Once the partition bounds have been extended to cover all the space that was once the partition, you should run checkdisk, so that the new space is viewable.

In short.

Delete everything from D.
Defragment C.
Use partition magic to change the partition type of C to FAT32.
Use partition magic to delete the D partition, and resize the C partition into the free space.

Reboot to Windows. Run checkdisk.
If the filesystem was formatted as FAT16 there should be a tool available to convert to FAT32, under Programs => Accessories => System Tools.

If the filesystem was formatted as FAT32 in the first instance all you will have to do is run checkdisk, after resize.

Bod

Gaz

Also the reason the C: drive is set to 2 gig is that alot of PC companys (dell, Gateway etc etc ) Wanted people to just use c for the operating system , that way if a user rang tech support and they wanted to format the guys system they didnt have to worry about loosing vital info ... unfortunatly they never told people thats why your c drive is 2gig and people filled it up.

Know you know !

longword

Originally posted by Typedef
To convert the FS to FAT32 Windows 95 had a tool to do that.

GNU parted will do that for you, converting FAT16 to FAT32 on the fly. Though I'm not sure if it can handle the system bits correctly. Probably a good idea to have a Win98 boot floppy on hand just in case so you can SYS A: C:

leeroybrown

Windows 98 has a perfectly good conversion tool for FAT16 --> FAT32.

It should be in Accessories >> Admin Tools.

If it's not installed you can add it as a Windows Component from "Add Remove Programs".

Cake Fiend

Originally posted by Darth Homer
Also the reason the C: drive is set to 2 gig is that alot of PC companys (dell, Gateway etc etc ) Wanted people to just use c for the operating system

Yup, he should have been installing his program files on the D drive.

Saruman

The other reason the partitions were split way back when was that fat32 was very new and as such not fully trusted as a file system so manufacturers wanted the os on good ole reliable fat16 so it would not arse up... unfortunatly any software automatically installs to the drive the os is installed on (without hacking the registry) so your average Joe has no idea how to do that. And cant even install to as opposed to c:


Anyway Partition Magic has a "MERGE" utility.. simply merges both partitions from withing windows, reboots to complete the process and its all hunky dory...

DeVore

The "MERGE" option sounds the business!

One drive is FAT and one is FAT32 (I presume FAT means FAT16).

I'll have to convert it to fat32 first I guess.

The fncked up thing is that he didnt install any programs, DELL did, onto the C: drive... gah.

Thanks for all the help guys! 'ppreciate it!


DeV.