re: purchase hard drive for Win 98SE desktop computer
Sunday, May 24, 2009 at 10:42 am
Windows 98 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Ed
(741 messages posted)
Western Digital, Maxtor and Seagate are three well known manufacturers of hard disks.
I have had good results with Western Digital's disks.
For a pre-1999 computer you will need a Parallel-ATA (PATA) type of hard disk, also
known as an IDE (or EIDE) hard disk.
My tip-of-the-day: If you buy an IDE hard disk that is the same size as the
existing hard disk in the computer, the new disk is certain to work without
a BIOS upgrade.
If you buy a hard disk that is larger than the current one, you might need to upgrade
the BIOS in the computer in order for the computer to recognise it. This can be difficult.
You have to find a BIOS upgrade on the website of the manufacturer of the BIOS (but
even simply identifying the manufacturer and version number of the existing BIOS
can be tricky).
However, with Windows 98 the main hardware barrier was 33.8 GB (if the computer is
an old one, i.e. manufacturered before the year 2000). So you could be reasonably
confident that such a computer will probably recognise any hard disk up to 32 GB
without a BIOS upgrade. Thus a 30 GB disk, for example, would probably work.
No computer that uses Windows 98 can use a PATA / IDE hard disk larger than 137 GB,
even with a BIOS upgrade.
Other considerations:
The new disk must first be partitioned (as one or more FAT32 partitions), and each
partition must then be formatted.
1. The Windows 98 version of FDISK.EXE has a limit of 64 GB. But by using the Windows
ME version of FDISK instead (which is compatible with Win98) it is possible to partition
a disk exceeding 64 GB.
Third party (i.e. non-Microsoft) partitioning utilities can also be used to partition
a disk larger than 64 GB, e.g. the utility programs supplied on the hard disk manufacturer's
website.
2. The Windows 98 version of FORMAT.COM will successfully format a FAT32 partition
exceeding 64 GB. For although a cosmetic defect in the program displays an incorrect
value for the size of the partition during the partitioning process where the disk
size exceeds 64 GB, the partition will nonetheless be formatted correctly.
3. To get a clear understanding of how to partition and format a hard disk, using
FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM, read this thread: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/win98/1192677773
An alternative solution is to (if possible) buy a disk which is pre-formatted as
FAT32, then you don't have to manually partition and format it.
Another alternative is to use a partitioning utility from the disk manufactrurer's
website, instead of using FDISK.EXE and FORMAT.COM
Ed
On Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 12:17 am, peppertreedad wrote:
>Who sells (manufacturer) new external hard drives for Win98se desktop computers?
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 |  | re: purchase hard drive for Win 98SE desktop computer (Ed: Sun, May 24, 2009, 10:42 am) |
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