you need to use the lba48 patch for win98 if you use an IDE device larger than 137GB (128GiB)

http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=635

Most USB drives do not have the Win98 issue of 127Gb if they do not use Windows native drivers. If your USB card uses it's own driver that does not call on ESDI_506.PDR you should be OK to near 1TB though a good discussion on this had lots comments about not making partitions over 250Gb due to certain Win9x apps/games may have issues reading/writing to larger parts.
Quote from Rloew 2010 "I said "Default" which means Motherboard IDE and ESDI_506.PDR enabled. USB Drives do not use ESDI_506.PDR. Support depends upon the USB Controller in the Enclosure. Some older ones did not support more than 137GB."
Rloew made many patches, some for Win9x HD's limits also.
IMHO It is always wise to make the primary C windows Win98 partition 127Gb or less to avoid any possible software conflicts.....

douglar wrote on 2023-12-13, 02:19:

you need to use the lba48 patch for win98 if you use an IDE device larger than 137GB (128GiB)

http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=635

I grabbed this before but that's when I found mention that USB drivers don't follow the rules of regular drives.

Horun wrote on 2023-12-13, 02:59:

Most USB drives do not have the Win98 issue of 127Gb if they do not use Windows native drivers. If your USB card uses it's own d […]
Show full quote

Most USB drives do not have the Win98 issue of 127Gb if they do not use Windows native drivers. If your USB card uses it's own driver that does not call on ESDI_506.PDR you should be OK to near 1TB though a good discussion on this had lots comments about not making partitions over 250Gb due to certain Win9x apps/games may have issues reading/writing to larger parts.
Quote from Rloew 2010 "I said "Default" which means Motherboard IDE and ESDI_506.PDR enabled. USB Drives do not use ESDI_506.PDR. Support depends upon the USB Controller in the Enclosure. Some older ones did not support more than 137GB."
Rloew made many patches, some for Win9x HD's limits also.
IMHO It is always wise to make the primary C windows Win98 partition 127Gb or less to avoid any possible software conflicts.....

Thanks for the info - it's not for installing games but it's to hold Alcohol 120% CD images. I've been steadily ripping all my games with the copy protection left intact to spare my CD drives. These images are 800MB per CD and I have some 1000 CDs (still far from done) so you can imagine I can use all the space I can. Windows itself is on a smaller partition with a 120GB D drive.

red_avatar wrote on 2023-12-13, 06:38:

Thanks for the info - it's not for installing games but it's to hold Alcohol 120% CD images. I've been steadily ripping all my games with the copy protection left intact to spare my CD drives. These images are 800MB per CD and I have some 1000 CDs (still far from done) so you can imagine I can use all the space I can. Windows itself is on a smaller partition with a 120GB D drive.

As an alternative, you could set up a network share on a newer computer and store the images there. Then mount them directly through the network from Win98. There are no storage limits that way.

If you have a NAS, this is even easier.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-12-13, 06:56:

red_avatar wrote on 2023-12-13, 06:38:

Thanks for the info - it's not for installing games but it's to hold Alcohol 120% CD images. I've been steadily ripping all my games with the copy protection left intact to spare my CD drives. These images are 800MB per CD and I have some 1000 CDs (still far from done) so you can imagine I can use all the space I can. Windows itself is on a smaller partition with a 120GB D drive.

As an alternative, you could set up a network share on a newer computer and store the images there. Then mount them directly through the network from Win98. There are no storage limits that way.

If you have a NAS, this is even easier.

I tried this in the past but honestly, I'd prefer to keep the retro PC's offline. I got it working fine in Windows 8 but in Windows 10 I couldn't get it to work no matter what and it gave me a huge headache. In the end I had to resort to creating an FTP drive and use Filezilla but that was quite cumbersome. Maybe with a NAS it would be easier but if I can just use a stick, it would be a lot easier for me. Since it's PCI and USB 2, I get good speeds as well - easily 10MB/sec which for a 1998 PC is a LOT. Even a 52x CD drive will only max out at 8MB/sec and a lot slower for smaller files.

Do you really need all that space? If you don't want to connect to a network share and insist on USB then just copy what you need to USB when you need it. I'm hoping you are permanently storing those images and backing them up on something more reliable than USB and SD cards ......

Since the USB stick handles the drive via its own NAND controller I doubt there will be any partition size limitations so long as Win98se identifies the USB device correctly, the only time I see there being an issue is with USB drives that have a physical disk in them as they simply pass IDE/Sata over the USB bus and still require 98 to handle them.

If 98 identifies it correctly and sees the partitions on the stick then I say just use it as normal, you shouldn't be filling it up in any case as it still has all the normal limitations of a Dram-less NAND drive and at USB 2.0 speeds it'll be as slow as molasses.

DosFreak wrote on 2023-12-13, 13:35:

Do you really need all that space? If you don't want to connect to a network share and insist on USB then just copy what you need to USB when you need it. I'm hoping you are permanently storing those images and backing them up on something more reliable than USB and SD cards ......

What is more reliable than USB and SD cards?

theelf wrote on 2023-12-13, 15:27:

What is more reliable than USB and SD cards?

My experience has been that CF's, DOM's and SATA SSD devices fail less often than SD's & thumb drives. Maybe I just got unlucky. Maybe I bought poorly. Maybe it'd because SD's & thumb drives frequently tend to be price sensitive consumer devices. Maybe it's because I tend to plug and unplug those devices more often and they are more electrically exposed.

douglar wrote on 2023-12-13, 15:35:

theelf wrote on 2023-12-13, 15:27:

What is more reliable than USB and SD cards?

My experience has been that CF's, DOM's and SATA SSD devices fail less often than SD's & thumb drives. Maybe I just got unlucky. Maybe I bought poorly. Maybe it'd because SD's & thumb drives frequently tend to be price sensitive consumer devices. Maybe it's because I tend to plug and unplug those devices more often and they are more electrically exposed.

I think is about fake ans low quality brands

CF but and specially pendrive and sd are very easy to buy a fake one

but anyways i never in my life had bad luck with any pendrice, microsd, sd, cf etc. but yes a lot with old CDs, floppy, tapes and HDD

i don't see a problem with external usb sata/ssd drives so long as the file system is fat32 and the partition table is mbr (not gpt). going above 2tb fat32 partitions involves 4kb vs 512b disc sector emulation, but that isn't going to come into play here. i have a couple 2tb usb sata drives and never noticed a problem with either xp or win98se using pci usb 2.0 cards (nec).

unless the op is going to throw away his physical media afterwards, the usb copy is the backup.

DosFreak wrote on 2023-12-13, 13:35:

Do you really need all that space? If you don't want to connect to a network share and insist on USB then just copy what you need to USB when you need it. I'm hoping you are permanently storing those images and backing them up on something more reliable than USB and SD cards ......

Well let me explain what I have in mind.

I have three PCs, each with a USB 2.0 PCI card (exact same one in each):

IBM Aptiva Pentium 166 for late DOS games & early Windows 9X games (1995-1997)
Pentium 2 333Mhz for mid to late Windows 9X games (1997-1999)
Pentium 3 1Ghz for late Windows 9X games (1999-200X)

I also have a Core2Duo PC but that PC has USB 2 ports on its own so I don't need a PCI card there - and it runs Windows XP so there's no issue there either.

Right now I have 4 different sticks to hold all the Alcohol CD images, 128GB per stick. It means 4 drive letters which is fiddly in Windows because, combined with my Alcohol virtual drive, upon reboot it often shifts drive letters. That's why I want to convert to one USB stick if I can.

The USB stick contains 1:1 copies of every game I can make a copy of (some are too well protected but 90% work fine up till 2006-2007) for all 4 PCs. The idea is that I only need to move the USB stick between the PCs instead of 4 which is really cumbersome. I rip the CDs on the Pentium 3 or Core 2 Duo and then move it to the USB sticks. I've made backups before but 4 sticks are not as easy to backup as 1 stick which I can just plug into my backup NAS.

So yeah, it's an archival system with a NAS backup and a single 1TB stick should be enough for now unless I start to backup the DVDs as well. Even if I can't get the copy protection working, there's cracks for most games available at least.

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-12-13, 13:44:

Since the USB stick handles the drive via its own NAND controller I doubt there will be any partition size limitations so long as Win98se identifies the USB device correctly, the only time I see there being an issue is with USB drives that have a physical disk in them as they simply pass IDE/Sata over the USB bus and still require 98 to handle them.

If 98 identifies it correctly and sees the partitions on the stick then I say just use it as normal, you shouldn't be filling it up in any case as it still has all the normal limitations of a Dram-less NAND drive and at USB 2.0 speeds it'll be as slow as molasses.

Thanks for the info. I plan to fill about 80% - I never like to have my drives too full.

OK update. I've been writing files to the 1TB SD card and it works fine but it completely misreports how much space is free & used. I have 50GB on there now and it claims I only used 1GB ... any idea why this is? And is it a risk?

red_avatar wrote on 2023-12-14, 17:17:

OK update. I've been writing files to the 1TB SD card and it works fine but it completely misreports how much space is free & used. I have 50GB on there now and it claims I only used 1GB ... any idea why this is? And is it a risk?

I don't know why but it sounds like something is very wrong, either with your file system or the way Win98 is communicating with the drive. Have you tried running a check disk?

douglar wrote on 2023-12-14, 18:51:

red_avatar wrote on 2023-12-14, 17:17:

OK update. I've been writing files to the 1TB SD card and it works fine but it completely misreports how much space is free & used. I have 50GB on there now and it claims I only used 1GB ... any idea why this is? And is it a risk?

I don't know why but it sounds like something is very wrong, either with your file system or the way Win98 is communicating with the drive. Have you tried running a check disk?

When I reinserted it in my regular PC it detected an error & fixed it - seems fine now. I get these errors even with smaller sticks so I think it's just Windows 98 being wonky with the drive when shutting down. I've never lost any data.

it's probably been mentioned before, but make sure the lba flag is set on your large partitions if linux set them up. also, i would install all the r. loew ram and hdd patches for win98 whether you have a pressing need for them or not. makes for a very stable system, at least for my purposes. i also still have kernelex installed, even though the initial use case i installed it for is long abandoned and never had a specific need for it since.