Windows NT and Large Discs

[stickyb]

I've got dragged in to help my local school with some IT upgrades, and have come across a problem.

Situation is that we have taken a PC with a small (6Gb) hard disc, taken the disc out, and installed a new 20Gb hard disc.

If we install Windows 98, no problems, sees the whole disc as 20Gb, everyone happy.

However, install Windows NT Server 4.0 on the machine, and it refuses to see the disc as anything larger than 8Gb.

I know there is a limitation that the boot partition cannot be bigger than 4gb, but have not come across this limitation before, but I have not used NT4 on an IDE machine either.

Anyone got any explanation, ideas, help?

Thanks

[matelot]

To be honest, haven't used NTServer before, only straight NT4 (network + workstation).

However, NT4 will set up its own limited-size file system (NTFS) and that's all it will recognise.

Most administrators using large drives will partition the drive, put Windows on C: and dual boot with NT on a separate partition, but initial configuration may not be straight forward for a lot of people.

I believe Windows 2000 will allow NT4 to see each others file systems, but best have a guru chip in here with the real low down.

Apologies as this aint much help :-)

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Me, sweat? I'm that cool, it's condensation.

[fobotcso]

Er.. me not guru, but I'm a long time NT4 WS man with a little experience of Server on a Network. I don't think there is any basic difference in the kernels of WS and Server.

I have a 2GB Boot partition using FAT. I also have (on a separate physical drive) a 17GB partition using NTFS. Smaller FAT partitions have the advantage that they waste less disk space as they have smaller clusters. Having the Boot partition as FAT has the advantage that you can boot to DOS with a floppy in a crisis and manipulate the files with DOS utilities. DOS can't see NTFS. NTFS is good for stuff you aren't ever going to have to fiddle with manually.

I'll read up some more about the problem you've experienced and get back if I come up with anything useful.

[JamesG]

This is a wild thought "from the hip" and may be spurious....

You do not say whether Win 98 sees a 20GB disk [across partitions] or a whole 20GB partition.

I know that Win NT cannot handle FAT 32, which Win 98 can use as well as FAT 16.

If 12GB of the disk was formatted FAT 32 and 8 GB FAT 16, it could explain why Win NT can only see 8GB.

I know that an IBM Thinkpad [W98] that I used came with C: formatted as FAT 16 and partition D: as FAT 32. To take it it Win NT required a low level format.

Apologies if this reply is irrelavent, but bets of luck.

[fobotcso]

This is from the NT4 Server Resource Kit in TechNet:

"On x86-based computers, the Starting and Ending Head, Cylinder, and Sector fields on the startup disk are very important for starting up the computer. The code in the Master Boot Record uses these fields to find and load the Partition Boot Sector.
The Ending Cylinder field in the Partition Table is ten bits long, which limits the maximum cylinder number that can be described in the Partition Table to 1023. The Starting and Ending Head fields are one byte long, which limits this field to the range 0 – 255. The Starting and Ending Sector field is 6 bits long, limiting its range to 0 – 63. However, sectors start counting at 1 (versus 0 for the other fields), so the maximum number of sectors per track is 63.
Since current hard disks are low-level formatted with the industry standard 512-byte sector size, the maximum capacity disk that can be described by the Partition Table can be calculated as follows:
MaxCapacity = (sector size) x (sectors per track) x (cylinders) x (heads)
Substituting the maximum possible values yields:
512 x 63 x 1024 x 256 = 8,455,716,864 bytes or 7.8 GB (GB)
This calculation results in a maximum formatted capacity is slightly less than 8 GB.
However, the maximum cluster size that you can use for FAT volumes when running Windows NT is 64K, when using a 512 byte sector size. Therefore, the maximum size for a FAT volume is 4 GB.
If you have a dual-boot configuration with Windows 95 or MS-DOS, FAT volumes that might be accessed when using either of those operating systems are limited to 2 GB. In addition, Macintosh computers that are viewing volumes on a computer running Windows NT cannot see more than 2 GB. If you try to use a FAT volume larger than 2 GB when running MS-DOS or Windows 95, or access it from a Macintosh computer, you might get a message that there are 0 bytes available.
The maximum size of a FAT volume on a specific computer depends on the disk geometry, and the maximum values that can fit in the fields described in this section. The next table shows the typical size of a FAT volume when translation is enabled, and when it is disabled. The number of cylinders in both situations is 1024." No Table as I didn't think it would make the trip

Is the BIOS set up OK?

[stickyb]

Thanks for the info so far.
Just to explain a bit further, and remove confusion. It isn't about dual boot or anything. Just that installing W98 as the sole O/S sees a 20Gb disc, whereas wiping the disc and installing NT as the sole O/S will only give a disc of around 8Gb.

[matelot]

stickyb

NTServer will recognise about 10GB, but allowing for 'overhead', it'll settle around 8GB, the size it's detecting.

To fully utilise the disk, you will need to partition it using FDisk (if happy) or other software - perhaps dividing it 8/8/4 etc.

The other partitions can then be formatted through NT as NTFS (NT file system), and then you'll have your 20GB.

Partitioning is useful, because if you lose your OS, all other work etc. will be preserved on the other partitions :-)

Hope this helps a little.

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Me, sweat? I'm that cool, it's condensation.

[stickyb]

matelot, thanks for the info.
Do u mean fdisk under dos before starting the NT installation?

[matelot]

Way aye! Boot up with a dos floppy or a Win98 start-up disk - it really doesn't matter as long as you get to the A:\ prompt. Then run FDisk.

I've always found it useful to wipe all partitions and start from scratch. You can select hard disk support because you're going over 2GB. If you haven't used FDisk before GET ADVICE (although if you're starting from scratch you should be able to fathom it out).

Have fun.

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Me, sweat? I'm that cool, it's condensation.

[stickyb]

matelot, thanks a lot mate, will give it a whirl. Have used Fdisk many times before, so thats not a problem, just never though of having to use it before installing NT.

[Cornish Jack]

If you're happy with Fdisk, fine. If not, there's a nice little multi-boot programme - System Commander - which will allow you to mix and match whichever OSs you want - and keeps them totally separate. Additionally, it allows password protection at administrator and (differentially) at client level - for school users, that last one might be a useful method of keeping the little darlings' fiddling fingers away from the important bits!!! :) :)

[matelot]

Good point, CJ. The biggest problems with computer systems are the ******** users!

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Me, sweat? I'm that cool, it's condensation.

[ORAC]

If you use the NTFS file system you will:

a. support a volume up to 16 Eb (an exabyte = 2 to the power 64 bytes (16 gigabytes worth of gigabytes, which is a bit more than 8Gb. However, they are currently restricted to 2Tb hardware and system restraints.

b. File level security to keep kids out.

c. Native support for the Mac filing system.

d. Built in compression.

e. Long file name support.

f. Self repairing file system.

Downside:

NTFS cannot be used to format floppies.

Not compatible with Win95OSR2/Win98 FAT32 file system, so if you dual boot you cannot read files in the other partition. FAT32 is limited, (if you want to call it that!), to volumes of 4Tb (terabytes).

Each directory entry requires 2k.

Summary: If you want partition size now, use Win95OSR2/Win98 with FAT32.

If you want maximum security use NT4 NTFS.