X-Authentication-Warning:	delorie.com: mail set sender to opendos-bounces using -f
Message-Id:	<200409060915.i869FcLk010641@delorie.com>
From:	"Michal H. Tyc" <mht AT bttr-software DOT de>
Organization:	BTTR Software
Date:	Mon, 06 Sep 2004 10:51:41 +0200
X-Mailer:	Arachne V1.75+/3C
To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: Disk Size Limits
MIME-Version:	1.0
Reply-To:	opendos AT delorie DOT com

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 11:30:02 -0400 (EDT), Gary Welles wrote:

> I need some suggestions on what to do with an additional 5-7
> large harddisks I just finished attaching to my DR-DOS 7.03
> machine.  It's over the top, but I want to sort out the DOS
> possiblilties before adding a Unix.

I assume you have the hardware necessare to connect so many disks
(i.e., either a SCSI controller for SCSI disk or an additional
tertiary/quaternary IDE channels for IDE disks).

> So far I've learned that I'm limited to 8Gb per harddisk and

I seem to remember that there exists a driver (from Ontrack?)
which can present a hard disk larger than 8 Gb as a few logical
disk of size acceptable for older DOSes which cannot use LBA.
I don't remember the details, sorry.

> DOS primary partitions are limited to 2Gb.  While FDISK R2.13
> will allow creation of up to 4Gb (4094.6Mb) logical drives in
> the extended partions, file functions crash trying to access
> them.

4 Gb FAT16 partitions were supported by NT only (now they are
also supported by FreeDOS, unofficial DR-DOS 7.01.xx by
Udo Kuhnt, don't know about the official "DR-DOS 8.0" version);
all these can access more than 8 Gb of a hard disk).

These partitions have 64 Kb clusters, extremely inefficient unless 
you store only huge files -- which is, I guess, the purpose you
need so much storage space for.

> I haven't checked yet, but I'm guessing the working logical
> drive limit is 2Gb, which seems to be the limit for FDISK
> R1.76.

This is the FAT16 limit of most versions of DOS.

Hope this helps,

Michal

- Raw text -