Formatting HD - What is max size of C partition?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Muerte
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Muerte

I have always been confused about this. I know there is some type of
2GB limit and then there is a cylinder limit of some type. I made mine
2GB in size and now it is pretty much full. I will be upgrading to XP
Pro and will need more room.

I have been installing programs to a different partition for some time
now. It seems that all programs default to installing on C.

Does it depend on the file system (FAT/FAT32/NTFS)? I will probably be
installing multiple OS if that makes a difference. I have Partition
Magic and can make the partition bigger and convert it to a different
file system.

I read an article in a magazine about installing HD's and they made
the C partition 7GB in size using I belive FAT32.

Any help will be appreciated. If you know of an article on formatting
on a website please let me know the URL.


Thanks
 
Howdy!

Muerte said:
I have always been confused about this. I know there is some type of
2GB limit and then there is a cylinder limit of some type. I made mine
2GB in size and now it is pretty much full. I will be upgrading to XP
Pro and will need more room.
Click to expand...

The 2G limit was done away with with Win95 OSR2.

From there, it was a 1024 cylinder limit for some BIOSes and some
OSes (WinNT 4.0 for instance), but the actual SIZE limit was pretty much
gone.

For instance, I have a 80G C: on this machine I boot from (Win2K
Server).
I have been installing programs to a different partition for some time
now. It seems that all programs default to installing on C.

Does it depend on the file system (FAT/FAT32/NTFS)? I will probably be
installing multiple OS if that makes a difference. I have Partition
Magic and can make the partition bigger and convert it to a different
file system.
Click to expand...

It rather does - you need to find what you need for each OS first.
I read an article in a magazine about installing HD's and they made
the C partition 7GB in size using I belive FAT32.
Click to expand...

There's reasons to, and reasons not to. What OS are you running?
If Win9X, then it's best to keep the cluster size to 4K so that swap file
access is as fast as possible. OTOH, if you get over about 4 million
clusters (right at 16G), SCANDISK and DEFRAG die.

Then again, with NTFS (as in WinNT class OSes), 4K allocation units
and it doesn't matter HOW big the hard disk is ...

RwP
 
I guess it depends, somewhat, on the OS. I use a 30GB system partition for
XP Pro. I forget what 98's limit was (can't even remember what partition
size I used with it. I think something like 2GB is what I used with win98).
Haven't used that OS, in years (literally). If you install Win98 or
Win2000, along with XP...just make sure you install in this order:
98--->2000--->XP. You CAN install in any order. However, it requires some
maneuvering. I've always preferred using windows' boot manager, anyway.

-
Muerte stood up at show-n-tell, in
(e-mail address removed), and said:
 
Each file system has a limit. FAT16 maxes out at 2 GB. I think FAT32's
limit is 8GB. I think NTFS has one, but I don't know what it is. A buddy
of mine has a 120GB drive with one partition.
 
Each file system has a limit. FAT16 maxes out at 2 GB. I think FAT32's
limit is 8GB. I think NTFS has one, but I don't know what it is. A buddy
of mine has a 120GB drive with one partition.
Click to expand...

Fat32's limit is in the terabytes. There is a 64gb limit of Win98 fdisk,
and a 32GB limit on what WinXP will partition and format as FAT32. Other
limits are there which are BIOS induced/dependant
 
Muerte said:
I have always been confused about this. I know there is some type of
2GB limit and then there is a cylinder limit of some type. I made mine
2GB in size and now it is pretty much full. I will be upgrading to XP
Pro and will need more room.

I have been installing programs to a different partition for some time
now. It seems that all programs default to installing on C.

Does it depend on the file system (FAT/FAT32/NTFS)? I will probably be
installing multiple OS if that makes a difference. I have Partition
Magic and can make the partition bigger and convert it to a different
file system.

I read an article in a magazine about installing HD's and they made
the C partition 7GB in size using I belive FAT32.

Any help will be appreciated. If you know of an article on formatting
on a website please let me know the URL.


Thanks
Click to expand...

There are also ultilities that come with modern hard drives that circumvent
OS partition limitations.I have Win 98 SE on a 80 GB hard drive (FAT32) It
is all one partition (74 GB, the difference is due to hardware manufacturers
measuring the size of a gigabyte differently then software engineer, it's a
long boring story)

Chaoticwhizz
 
Howdy!

Dogbert said:
Each file system has a limit. FAT16 maxes out at 2 GB. I think FAT32's
limit is 8GB. I think NTFS has one, but I don't know what it is. A buddy
of mine has a 120GB drive with one partition.
Click to expand...

FAT16 maxes out at 4G, but non-NT based OSes max out at 2G.

FAT32 has a max of 128 terabytes. Yes, TERA bytes.

NTFS is in the petabyte range.

RwP
 
Per Microsoft, WinNT can have a FAT16 partition up to 4 GB, but
DOS/Win95/Win98 don't support over 2GB.

FAT32 can support up to 4 TB, but Win2000 and WinXP only support FAT32
partitions up to 32 GB in size.

What the file type supports isn't as important as what the OS suopports.
 
Per Microsoft, WinNT can have a FAT16 partition up to 4 GB, but
DOS/Win95/Win98 don't support over 2GB.
Click to expand...

thats funny, i have a system right now with a 20GB harddrive running
98.
 
thats funny, i have a system right now with a 20GB harddrive running
98.
Click to expand...

Then it is fat32, not fat16. You snipped the part where he stated the
huge capacity of FAT32, which 98 supports. This was to show the
difference in how NT and 98 handle FAT16.
 
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