Specifications

Windows 137GB Capacity Barrier Version 1.0
16 7-Mar-2003
7. Windows 98SE on a traditional motherboard
Microsoft Windows 98SE has a native limitation of 137GB supporting ATA interface disc drives
that are attached to traditional Primary and Secondary IDE Channels on the motherboard. In this
configuration Win98SE will not create partitions greater than 137GB.
Nonetheless, the native Windows 98SE ScanDisk and Defrag utilities are limited to smaller
partition sizes and may not function on partitions greater than 127GB. Because the 16-bit
memory model causes this limitation it applies to any type of drive interface on either
motherboards or controller cards. There are no fixes available from Microsoft for this limitation.
Third-party software may be available to defrag and monitor larger FAT32 file systems. Seagate
recommends creating partitions of a size that can be managed by the native Windows 98SE
ScanDisk and Defrag utilities.
Intel offers drivers to support the full capacity of drives larger than 137 GB on motherboards
equipped with the Intel 800 Series chipset. For help identifying your Intel chipset see the Chipset
Identification section below. If you are not sure what kind of chipset your motherboard has,
contact your system or motherboard manufacturer. If your motherboard is unsupported by a non-
Microsoft driver, Windows 98 support of ATA drives larger than 137GB are possible on an ATA
controller card. Otherwise, if you plan to upgrade to an operating system that has native support
of 48-bit addressing, the drive could be prepared up to 137GB with the remaining capacity added
later.
The Intel Application Accelerator v2.3 or above is listed compatible with Windows 98SE. Detailed
information and the latest version of the driver can be downloaded from
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/
. See the Intel Application Accelerator section below for
addition information.
Caution: If your system's old boot drive is less than 137GB and uses a drive overlay program
(DDO) to overcome a previous BIOS capacity limitation (such as Disk Manager or
DiscWizard and identifiable as a blue banner box before the operating system loads),
then the Intel Application Accelerator is incompatible with your system. If you have this
legacy configuration, the Ultra ATA controller card is the only solution for Windows
98SE. If you install the Intel Application Accelerator on this type of system, loss of data
will occur. If you are not sure if your system uses a DDO, contact your drive
manufacturer.
In general, if you are building a new single-drive system with a 137GB BIOS limitation
and the drive is greater than 137GB, then DiscWizard Starter Edition will utilize a DDO
that is compatible with IAA.
Microsoft has issued updates that relate specifically to ATA (IDE) interface disc drives and
Windows 98SE limitations and recommends that you keep the OS updated with the latest drivers.
For example, see also the Microsoft Knowledgebase articles Q273017:"Windows IDE Hard Drive
Cache package", Q263044:"Fdisk Does Not Recognize Full Size of Hard Disks Larger than 64
GB" and Q184006:"Limitations of FAT32 File System" (regarding the ScanDisk tool) at
support.microsoft.com.