Old PC, big drive

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Old PC, big drive
started by: sheldonisaac

Posted by sheldonisaac on Mar. 23 2008,15:29

At present I use GRUB in MBR to multiboot Windows 98SE or frugal DSL from an 80Gb IDE hard drive

The ASUS P5A BIOS is from 2002,
and can't "support"(?) hard drives above (128? 137?) Gb

Can someone help figure out how to cope with the 160Gb IDE drive I've ordered?

I don't mind making many small partitions.

I read something about data corruption if Windows 98SE tries to access parts of a disk with higher logical block addresses beyond the maximum it 'knows about'

Thanks much, Sheldon

Posted by curaga on Mar. 23 2008,16:12

The bios restrictions don't apply to proper operating systems, ie Linux

windoze up to 2000 SP3 is affected

The bios restriction basically means legacy OS's can't see more than that, and the bios can't boot farther than that. So you only need to create a small boot partition to the start, holding the grub files, then the 98 part wholly under the limit, and then the linux partition.

Also to not upset the 98, make grub hide the other two partitions, making 98 think it is alone, on the first partition.

Posted by sheldonisaac on Mar. 23 2008,17:28

Quote (curaga @ Mar. 23 2008,11:12)

The bios restrictions don't apply to proper operating systems, ie Linux

Thanks a lot, Curaga!

Would this work?

-------

Connect the big drive as slave on IDE1; or perhaps master or slave on IDE2.

Boot from the existing smaller HD on IDE1.

Make a 1Gb primary partition on the new big HD.
Make an extended partition on the new big HD, then logical partitions in that.
Format all the partitions I just created.

After booting Windows 98SE from the existing smaller HD, be aware to read or write under Windows to only the partitions
that are completely in the first 128 GB of the disk?

Posted by curaga on Mar. 23 2008,18:18

If you want to move data between the two disks you will get better performance with them in different ide channels.

Your assumption for 98 is correct.