Basic limit on Partition size for Win98 is 2GB in FAT 16, 127.53GB in FAT 32. Basic limit on Partition size for WinXP is 2GB in FAT 16, 127.53 GB in FAT 32, 134 GB in NTFS Partition or Unlimited in Dynamic Disk Management. (RAID Arrays, Network Clusters and some other more advanced stuff)
A large drive can be Partitioned into Logical Drives to fit into the limitations of an OS provided that the Motherboard and Drive Controllers will recognize the drive.
Most Hard Drive manufactures provide DM (Disk Management) programs that will partition a Hard Drive to work with any OS provided that the motherboard will recognize the drive at all.
Maxtor is here:
http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/M...channelpath=/en_us/Support/Software Downloads
Seagate is here:
http://www.seagate.com/support/software/
Western Digital is here:
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999
Samsung is here:
http://product.samsung.com/cgi-bin/nabc/support/b2c_support_index.jsp?eUser=
The beauty of using the manufacture’s disk management software to install a new hard drive is that you do not have to use fdisk or completely reinstall your OS. All of these manufactures have the software setup so that you can mirror your old drive as you install the new one.
Win 98, Win XP FAT 16 Size Limit for a Partition is 2GB
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310561
Maximum partition size using the FAT16 file system in Windows XP
View products that this article applies to.
Article ID : 310561
Last Review : October 1, 2004
Revision : 1.0
This article was previously published under Q310561
SUMMARY
This article describes the maximum partition size limit using the FAT16 file system in Microsoft Windows XP.
MORE INFORMATION
Windows XP supports the creation of primary partitions and logical drives of up to 4 gigabytes (GB) using the FAT16 file system. The maximum cluster size is 64K.
The 4-GB partition limit is imposed by the maximum number of clusters and the largest cluster size supported by the FAT file system. In Windows XP, FAT16 is limited to 64K clusters. Multiply the maximum number of clusters (64k) by the maximum cluster size (64K), and the result is 4GB. In addition to Windows XP, Microsoft Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 also support FAT16 volumes up to 4GB in size.
FAT16 volumes larger than 2GB are not accessible from computers running Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows 98, Windows 95, or MS-DOS. The size limit for FAT16 volumes in these operating systems is 2 GB. In other words, to maintain compatibility with Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 95, or MS-DOS, a volume cannot be larger than 2 GB. For additional information about FAT16 drive and partition size limits in Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 95, and MS-DOS, click the article numbers below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
118335 Maximum partition size using FAT16 file system
NOTE: Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows 98, and Windows 95 OEM Service Release version 2 (OSR2) support larger FAT volumes by using the FAT32 file system. For more information about the FAT32 file system, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
310525 Description of the FAT32 file system in Windows XP
154997 Description of the FAT32 File System
184006 Limitations of FAT32 file system
REFERENCES
For additional information about converting a FAT16 or FAT32 volume to NTFS, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
307881 How to convert a FAT16 volume or a FAT32 volume to an NTFS file system in Windows XP
140365 Default cluster size for FAT and NTFS
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APPLIES TO
• Microsoft Windows XP Professional Edition
• Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
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Win98, Win XP FAT 32 Size Limit for a Partition is 127.53 GB
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/184006/
Limitations of FAT32 File System
View products that this article applies to.
Article ID : 184006
Last Review : December 16, 2004
Revision : 3.2
This article was previously published under Q184006
For a Microsoft Windows XP version of this article, see 314463.
SUMMARY
This article discusses limitations of the FAT32 file system with Windows operating systems.
MORE INFORMATION
The following limitations exist using the FAT32 file system with Windows operating systems:
• Clusters cannot be 64 kilobytes (KB) or larger. If clusters were 64 KB or larger, some programs (such as Setup programs) might calculate disk space incorrectly.
• A volume must contain at least 65,527 clusters to use the FAT32 file system. You cannot increase the cluster size on a volume using the FAT32 file system so that it ends up with less than 65,527 clusters.
• The maximum possible number of clusters on a volume using the FAT32 file system is 268,435,445. With a maximum of 32 KB per cluster with space for the file allocation table (FAT), this equates to a maximum disk size of approximately 8 terabytes (TB).
• The ScanDisk tool included with Microsoft Windows 95 and Microsoft Windows 98 is a 16-bit program. Such programs have a single memory block maximum allocation size of 16 MB less 64 KB. Therefore, The Windows 95 or Windows 98 ScanDisk tool cannot process volumes using the FAT32 file system that have a FAT larger than 16 MB less 64 KB in size. A FAT entry on a volume using the FAT32 file system uses 4 bytes, so ScanDisk cannot process the FAT on a volume using the FAT32 file system that defines more than 4,177,920 clusters (including the two reserved clusters). Including the FATs themselves, this works out, at the maximum of 32 KB per cluster, to a volume size of 127.53 gigabytes (GB).
• You cannot decrease the cluster size on a volume using the FAT32 file system so that the FAT ends up larger than 16 MB less 64 KB in size.
• You cannot format a volume larger than 32 GB in size using the FAT32 file system in Windows 2000. The Windows 2000 FastFAT driver can mount and support volumes larger than 32 GB that use the FAT32 file system (subject to the other limits), but you cannot create one using the Format tool. This behavior is by design. If you need to create a volume larger than 32 GB, use the NTFS file system instead.
NOTE: When attempting to format a FAT32 partition larger than 32 GB, the format fails near the end of the process with the following error:
Logical Disk Manager: Volume size too big.
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APPLIES TO
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional Edition
• Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition
• Microsoft Windows 98 Standard Edition
Win NT, WinXP NTFS Size Limit for a Partition is 134 GB if using standard partitions and Unlimited if using Dynamic Disk Management. (RAID Array)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000/