External 200Gb USB drive - can I use just 1 partition?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter
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Peter

SP1 in WinXP helped avoiding 128GB limit issue.
It does not matter if it is external, but it does matter if that is a second
or the only disk in the system.
For second (or n-th) disk it is just fine. I would be reluctant to have a
single disk system partitioned that way. Why? Because system maintenance and
recovery are more complicated when you have OS, applications and data on the
same partition.
 
I have a 200Gb Maxtor HD being used as an external drive connected via
USB and am currently using it with just a single partition of 200Gb and
seems to be working fine. My OS is WinXP Pro SP1.

I have also connected it via USB to a laptop running Win98 and that also
seems to work fine.

Reading other messages though seems to suggest that I should be having
problems and that I should be using a partition size less than 128Gb.
Can anyone clear up the confusion? And just to repeat this is an
EXTERNAL drive because I know that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance.
 
I'm not sure, I have never used 200GB disk with Win98. But you can make a
test with a large dummy files (4GB) to fill it up.
I think most of the problems are related to FDISK and
partitioning/formatting issues under Win98.
 
SP1 in WinXP helped avoiding 128GB limit issue.
It does not matter if it is external, but it does matter if that is a second
or the only disk in the system.
For second (or n-th) disk it is just fine. I would be reluctant to have a
single disk system partitioned that way. Why? Because system maintenance and
recovery are more complicated when you have OS, applications and data on the
same partition.
Click to expand...



Thanks for your message, Peter. It is a second drive, my main drive is
a 120Gb Maxtor partitioned into 4 x 30Gb.

What about its use on the Win98 laptop though? At the moment it seems
to be working fine in that it appears as a 200Gb drive and I appear to
be able to access any data on it. At present I only have about 60Gb of
data on there, am I likely to run into problems when I get beyond the
128 or 137 Gb mark ?
 
Since it is USB you will not see any limits of the IDE drivers, as they are
not used.

The FAT32 volume is over the official Win98 supported size, but nobody else
has reported problems with it.
 
I'm not sure, I have never used 200GB disk with Win98. But you can make a
test with a large dummy files (4GB) to fill it up.
I think most of the problems are related to FDISK and
partitioning/formatting issues under Win98.
Click to expand...

Just one thing: I thought 98 can't access NTFS formatted drives and
FAT32 wouldn't be possible on such beast due to its limitation.

Maybe it's a nature of external hard drive that gets around the format
issue?
 
Peter said:
SP1 in WinXP helped avoiding 128GB limit issue.
Click to expand...

There is no 128GB limit issue with external drives except for serial ATA.
At least none that can be helped by driver updates in service packs.
The problem will be further up in the Firewire- or USB to IDE bridge.
It does not matter if it is external,
Click to expand...

Yes it does.
but it does matter if that is a second or the only disk in the system.
Click to expand...

Yes, but for other reasons.
 
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