Logical Block Addressing

Having spent considerable time Google-ing this subject, and scouring Microsoft.com for answers, I have decided to ask for the assistance of some brave and optimistic technicians.

I seek a Windows Hack that will allow 98SE to support 48-bit Logical Block Addressing. I have located one "High Capacity Patch" online:
http://members.aol.com/rloew1/
I tried the demo version of the patch, and am not sure it really did anything significant.

It all started at the store, where I was hell-bent on getting one of those new WD 74gb SATA Raptor hard drives. Unfortunatly, it said on the box, only for XP/2000 machines. Being a die-hard 98 user, I was disappointed, and decided to "settle" for a WD 200gb IDE hard drive. Trading capacity for speed.

When I began to partition it for use as the master drive, I was held back by the 137gb rule.

24-bit LBA only allows the OS to see 137gb, and anything beyond that barrier is subject to possible corruption. I'd like to remove this barrier, and any input would be appreciated.

Here are my PC statistics:

Operating System: ver 4.10.2222A Microsoft Windows 98 SE
OS Service Pack: Windows98 SE Service Pack 1 (Unofficial)
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 (IE 6.0 SP1)
DirectX: 4.09.00.0902 (DirectX 9.0b)
Utilities: Norton System Works '97
Alterations: X-Setup Pro, & E-Icons 98, + various other registry hacks

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe ACPI BIOS Rev 1011 (05/20/2004)
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
2 sticks of Corsair VS256MB400 PC3200 256mb DDR SDRAM @ 200mhz dual channel mode

A: 3½ Floppy drive

120 GB hard drive partitioned into 5 parts:

C: (FAT32) 5902 MB (2414 MB free)
D: (FAT32) 29032 MB (13110 MB free)
E: (FAT32) 14544 MB (12340 MB free)
F: (FAT32) 28648 MB (19688 MB free)
G: (FAT32) 36278 MB (25897 MB free)

80 GB hard drive partitioned into 1 part:

H: (FAT32) 76290 MB (57002 MB free)

Optical Drives:

J: AXV CD/DVD-ROM (Virtual DVD-ROM)
K: LITE-ON LTR-52327S (52x/32x/52x CD-RW)
L: SONY DVD RW DRU-530A (DVDRW)

Seasonic Super Tornado 400 watt power supply

BFG NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT ovrclocked 256MB GDDR3 AGP 8x/4x Graphics card driving a Dell P991 19 inch monitor @ 1600x1200 (32bit)

Slot 1: Empty
Slot 2: Lucent Win Modem
Slot 3: Creative EMU10K2 Audigy II ZS Gamer with Creative Inspire 5200 5.1 speakers
Slot 4: Exhaust Fan
Slot 5: TV/AV Capture, WDM Video Capture card

Network Adapter: Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter

PS2: Logitech Optical Mouse
PS2: Microsoft Internet Keyboard
USB: Logitech Wingman Extreme Digital 3D Joystick
USB: Microsoft XBox Controller
LPT1: Sony Playstation Digital Controller

Again, any helpful suggestions about how to change this OS to conform to 48-bit LBA mode is greatly appreciated. I highly suspect it will include changing some .vxd files and a registry hack. Also possible win.ini or system.ini editing.

 

Why not just partition two 100 GB drives?

 

Because I want to partition two 200 GB drives.

 

Im trying, best ive found so far

 

I really appreciate your help. I'm going to add yet another registry hack to my already mutant registry. I'll let you know what happens.

 

Here is something


from WD's website

 

That is an interesting web page, I wonder how I missed that one. I kept searching the WD site and MS sites for detailed info, but MS is not eager to supply users with radical mods that bring it up to XP's level.

I tried to format and partition the drive so I could copy my old drive to the new one, so I didn't use the boot CD, I used the lifeguard tools installed into the Windows GUI. I tried using IBM Disk Manager 2000, because I like it better, but it was not much help either.

I had to add the ATAPI key to my "Services" key because it didn't exist. So I added the reg value and all.

Microsoft adds this warning, which is why I didn't just do the reg edit before:

NOTE: If you enable 48-bit LBA ATAPI support by editing the preceding registry key, but your system does not meet the minimum requirements, you may observe the following behaviors:

And it proceeds to list a few "behaviors", all of which are HIGHLY undesirable.
I think they are hinting at the whole Motherboard BIOS angle, which I feel is pretty much covered by ASUS.

The reg entry is all that it takes to fix this???

 

I have been using the OS with the registry key added, and so far no problems. I have yet to try my 200GB HDD yet, but the OS isn't nutting up or anything.

 

great news