What is needed to backup my USB Drivers?

[98 Guy]

Most definately take the DEFRAG out of WinME.

Yes. Common knowledge.

I never heard about changing Scandisk and Fdisk ?
Why would that be needed?

First of all, there's DOS-mode scandisk (scandisk.exe) and windows-mode
GUI scandisk (which is actually 2 files - scandskw.exe and
diskmaint.dll).

The win-98se dos version of scandisk (scandisk.exe) works just fine -
the largest FAT32 hard drive I've scanned with it is 1.5 tb.

The win-98se version of defrag, scandskw.exe/diskmaint.dll are inferior
to their win-ME counterparts because they can't be used on volumes
larger than 128 gb. The ME versions can. It has to do with the max
number of clusters that a volume has - WinME versions have a higher
limit (but perhaps not much more than 200 gb).

As for fdisk - what you want is a Microsoft update to fdisk.exe (dated
may 2000). It can partition drives up to 500 gb in size. Anything
larger, you'll need third-party hard drive tools - or you can find
something called "Free Fdisk" (I can post a link if you can't find it).
The largest drive I've tested it on was 1.5 tb and it works fine on
that.

Format.com (from win-98se) also works fine on FAT32 volumes up to at
least 1.5 tb.

And these are SATA drives that I'm talking about. I don't mess around
with IDE drives larger than 80 gb.

What parts of Dos are missing from WinME? Anyone know?

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/winme/real_dos.htm

If I recall correctly, Microsoft somehow handicapped ME from being able
to actually format a floppy disk so that it could boot DOS (ie - they
prevented the user from being able to put DOS system files onto the
floppy). Not sure why they went to such lengths to make DOS so hidden
or "copy-able" or accessible on ME.

We've had discussions from time to time on MSFN.org about the pro's and
con's of ME vs 98. The consensus is that there are some deep-rooted
stability issues with ME that make it less desirable than win-98.
Win-98's USB handling can be made just as good as ME.

ME has one solid advantage over 98 in that it can natively handle 1.95
gb of ram, whereas win-98's upper limit is something like 1.195 gb.
This is without using third-party patches to increase the amount of RAM
that win-98 can make use of. But again, many people feel that ME's
quirky instability trumps the ability to use more ram than win-98.

You can't boot win-98 if the computer has more than 1.5 gb of ram
installed (ie say 2 gb) unless you use up some of that ram by creating a
RAM drive as part of your config.sys. Or if you use himemX.exe (instead
of himem.sys). Himemx.exe has a /switch that let's you set the amount
of ram that you "expose" to win-98.

[Lostgallifreyan]

Post by 98 Guy
We've had discussions from time to time on MSFN.org about the pro's and
con's of ME vs 98. The consensus is that there are some deep-rooted
stability issues with ME that make it less desirable than win-98.
Win-98's USB handling can be made just as good as ME.

Can it be done by direct transplant of the USB sussystem from WME to W98? if
so, do you have a pointer to instructions and required files?

[Lostgallifreyan]

Post by 98 Guy
You can't boot win-98 if the computer has more than 1.5 gb of ram
installed (ie say 2 gb) unless you use up some of that ram by creating a
RAM drive as part of your config.sys. Or if you use himemX.exe (instead
of himem.sys). Himemx.exe has a /switch that let's you set the amount
of ram that you "expose" to win-98.

I think Rudolph Loew made a way round this. I never went for it though, I
choose to stay with ITX boards that only take 1GB max anyway. I find I rarely
use much of the available capacity as it is, whatever I do. Even when I tried
making a RAM disk there and putting swap on it! (Weird idea, but it has the
advantage of W98 seeing what it expects to see, and not complaining).

[Tim Meddick]

You are incorrect when you state: "Microsoft somehow handicapped ME from
being able
to actually format a floppy disk so that it could boot DOS" ... (but you do
say how that was only if you "remembered correctly" so I won't hold it
against you).

The situation with Win_ME's DOS system-files is this; M$ did not want DOS
to be so visible anymore in Windows, as it was promoting the "NT" Windows
2000 version at the time, and so did it's best to "hide" DOS (WinME) but,
obviously, it WAS still there loaded before and "beneath" Windows (ME).
They had modified the DOS system-file: [IO.SYS] so that you no-longer had
the shutdown option: "Reboot into DOS-only mode" - simply "Reboot" and
"Shutdown".

But you are right when you state that the "format" command (Explorer
right-click on [A:] drive) no-longer supports "Create MS-DOS Boot Disk".

However, you can create a "Start-up Disk", containing a different copy of
[IO.SYS] from that used to start Windows [ME] , by opening the "Add/Remove
Programs" control panel, and selecting the "Start-up Disk" tab, then
pressing on the "Create Disk" button.

This creates a disk that does start a PC in real-DOS mode, using a
secondary [IO.SYS] copied from the [C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND\EBD] directory.

This is the [Emergency Boot Disk] folder from which the rest of the "help
tools" on the "Start-up Disk" are copied from.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)

P.S. If you try to create a M$-DOS boot (system) disk by using the
command-line: [format/s a:] you will be told, in addition to "this option
is no-longer available", be given directions on how to create an "EBD"
(Emergency Boot Disk), which *is* a bootable start-up disk.

Post by 98 Guy

Most definately take the DEFRAG out of WinME.

Yes. Common knowledge.

I never heard about changing Scandisk and Fdisk ?
Why would that be needed?

First of all, there's DOS-mode scandisk (scandisk.exe) and windows-mode
GUI scandisk (which is actually 2 files - scandskw.exe and
diskmaint.dll).
The win-98se dos version of scandisk (scandisk.exe) works just fine -
the largest FAT32 hard drive I've scanned with it is 1.5 tb.
The win-98se version of defrag, scandskw.exe/diskmaint.dll are inferior
to their win-ME counterparts because they can't be used on volumes
larger than 128 gb. The ME versions can. It has to do with the max
number of clusters that a volume has - WinME versions have a higher
limit (but perhaps not much more than 200 gb).
As for fdisk - what you want is a Microsoft update to fdisk.exe (dated
may 2000). It can partition drives up to 500 gb in size. Anything
larger, you'll need third-party hard drive tools - or you can find
something called "Free Fdisk" (I can post a link if you can't find it).
The largest drive I've tested it on was 1.5 tb and it works fine on
that.
Format.com (from win-98se) also works fine on FAT32 volumes up to at
least 1.5 tb.
And these are SATA drives that I'm talking about. I don't mess around
with IDE drives larger than 80 gb.

What parts of Dos are missing from WinME? Anyone know?

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/winme/real_dos.htm
If I recall correctly, Microsoft somehow handicapped ME from being able
to actually format a floppy disk so that it could boot DOS (ie - they
prevented the user from being able to put DOS system files onto the
floppy). Not sure why they went to such lengths to make DOS so hidden
or "copy-able" or accessible on ME.
We've had discussions from time to time on MSFN.org about the pro's and
con's of ME vs 98. The consensus is that there are some deep-rooted
stability issues with ME that make it less desirable than win-98.
Win-98's USB handling can be made just as good as ME.
ME has one solid advantage over 98 in that it can natively handle 1.95
gb of ram, whereas win-98's upper limit is something like 1.195 gb.
This is without using third-party patches to increase the amount of RAM
that win-98 can make use of. But again, many people feel that ME's
quirky instability trumps the ability to use more ram than win-98.
You can't boot win-98 if the computer has more than 1.5 gb of ram
installed (ie say 2 gb) unless you use up some of that ram by creating a
RAM drive as part of your config.sys. Or if you use himemX.exe (instead
of himem.sys). Himemx.exe has a /switch that let's you set the amount
of ram that you "expose" to win-98.

[j***@myplace.com]

Post by 98 Guy

Most definately take the DEFRAG out of WinME.

Yes. Common knowledge.

I never heard about changing Scandisk and Fdisk ?
Why would that be needed?

First of all, there's DOS-mode scandisk (scandisk.exe) and windows-mode
GUI scandisk (which is actually 2 files - scandskw.exe and
diskmaint.dll).
The win-98se dos version of scandisk (scandisk.exe) works just fine -
the largest FAT32 hard drive I've scanned with it is 1.5 tb.
The win-98se version of defrag, scandskw.exe/diskmaint.dll are inferior
to their win-ME counterparts because they can't be used on volumes
larger than 128 gb. The ME versions can. It has to do with the max
number of clusters that a volume has - WinME versions have a higher
limit (but perhaps not much more than 200 gb).

So that explains why I could not format or scandisk a 320GB USB
external drive in Win98. I finally had to reboot to Win2000 to do it.

While I could swear that I have a WinME CD, I sure can not find it.
Can these files be downloaded from anywhere?

Post by 98 Guy
As for fdisk - what you want is a Microsoft update to fdisk.exe (dated
may 2000). It can partition drives up to 500 gb in size. Anything

Where can I download this? Or I should say does MS still have it on
their site?

Post by 98 Guy
larger, you'll need third-party hard drive tools - or you can find
something called "Free Fdisk" (I can post a link if you can't find it).
The largest drive I've tested it on was 1.5 tb and it works fine on
that.
Format.com (from win-98se) also works fine on FAT32 volumes up to at
least 1.5 tb.

Hmmmm, it did not work on that USB drive I have....

Post by 98 Guy
And these are SATA drives that I'm talking about. I don't mess around
with IDE drives larger than 80 gb.

Why not? Why are SATA better?

Post by 98 Guy

What parts of Dos are missing from WinME? Anyone know?

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/winme/real_dos.htm
If I recall correctly, Microsoft somehow handicapped ME from being able
to actually format a floppy disk so that it could boot DOS (ie - they
prevented the user from being able to put DOS system files onto the
floppy). Not sure why they went to such lengths to make DOS so hidden
or "copy-able" or accessible on ME.
We've had discussions from time to time on MSFN.org about the pro's and
con's of ME vs 98. The consensus is that there are some deep-rooted
stability issues with ME that make it less desirable than win-98.
Win-98's USB handling can be made just as good as ME.
ME has one solid advantage over 98 in that it can natively handle 1.95
gb of ram, whereas win-98's upper limit is something like 1.195 gb.
This is without using third-party patches to increase the amount of RAM
that win-98 can make use of. But again, many people feel that ME's
quirky instability trumps the ability to use more ram than win-98.
You can't boot win-98 if the computer has more than 1.5 gb of ram
installed (ie say 2 gb) unless you use up some of that ram by creating a
RAM drive as part of your config.sys. Or if you use himemX.exe (instead
of himem.sys). Himemx.exe has a /switch that let's you set the amount
of ram that you "expose" to win-98.

[Lostgallifreyan]

Post by j***@myplace.com
So that explains why I could not format or scandisk a 320GB USB
external drive in Win98. I finally had to reboot to Win2000 to do it.

Do you know about the 48 bit LBA addressing need, and the problems when data
writes 'wrap' on to a lower address if 48 bit LBA support is not secured?

If not, do check it out, it's one of the nastiest things that can happen to
a big disk full of data if it goes wrong. Sometimes a disk can appear ok,
when it isn't, this is not a thing to leave unwatched.

[j***@myplace.com]

On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:31:21 -0500, Lostgallifreyan

Post by Lostgallifreyan

Post by j***@myplace.com
So that explains why I could not format or scandisk a 320GB USB
external drive in Win98. I finally had to reboot to Win2000 to do it.

Do you know about the 48 bit LBA addressing need, and the problems when data
writes 'wrap' on to a lower address if 48 bit LBA support is not secured?

No, and you lost me on this one. I have heard the term LBA, in fact I
thinbk it's in my CMOS, but I have no clue what I'm supposed to do.
All I know is that my 320gb drive would not properly cooperate in
Win98, so I split it into 3 partitions and then it worked fine. I
dont mind the partitions because I use one for backups of my desktop
PC, one for backups of my laptop, and XP machine, and the other is
just basic misc use.

Post by Lostgallifreyan
If not, do check it out, it's one of the nastiest things that can happen to
a big disk full of data if it goes wrong. Sometimes a disk can appear ok,
when it isn't, this is not a thing to leave unwatched.

So what am I supposed to do?

I should mention that using a NTFS format I could format the whole
drive, but I dont want NTFS. For Fat32 I had to make the 3
partitions.

[Lostgallifreyan]

Post by j***@myplace.com
On Thu, 07 Apr 2011 06:31:21 -0500, Lostgallifreyan

Post by Lostgallifreyan

Post by j***@myplace.com
So that explains why I could not format or scandisk a 320GB USB
external drive in Win98. I finally had to reboot to Win2000 to do it.

Do you know about the 48 bit LBA addressing need, and the problems when
data writes 'wrap' on to a lower address if 48 bit LBA support is not
secured?

No, and you lost me on this one. I have heard the term LBA, in fact I
thinbk it's in my CMOS, but I have no clue what I'm supposed to do.
All I know is that my 320gb drive would not properly cooperate in
Win98, so I split it into 3 partitions and then it worked fine. I
dont mind the partitions because I use one for backups of my desktop
PC, one for backups of my laptop, and XP machine, and the other is
just basic misc use.

Post by Lostgallifreyan
If not, do check it out, it's one of the nastiest things that can happen
to a big disk full of data if it goes wrong. Sometimes a disk can
appear ok, when it isn't, this is not a thing to leave unwatched.

So what am I supposed to do?
I should mention that using a NTFS format I could format the whole
drive, but I dont want NTFS. For Fat32 I had to make the 3
partitions.

So far you did the right thing *(but see below!). So long as any ATA drive
partition's last sector can be addressed by a 28 bit number you're within
design limits for W98 and all of its tools. (Each sector is 512 bytes, so
512*2^28 gives 137438953472 bytes (exactly 128GB if you divide by 1024 3
times, the 137GB term comes from dividing by 1000 3 times instead). If you
can retain that quirky bit of info you'll avoid a lot of nasty problems.

* If you format a drive to beyond the safe limit using another system you can
end up with a very dangerous condition! W98 might think the drive is safely
prepared as a single partition larger than 128 (real) GB when it cannot
address that extra space. Bad Things Happen when it tries to write there!

Plenty of detail here if you want it: http://www.48bitlba.com/index.htm (Not
my site).

I'll summarise here too, it's important stuff, so I'll take the time to save
you some.

If you go beyond this, with a drive larger than 128 (real, not decimal)
gigabytes, the extra address bits are ignored by the host, so an address
pointing to three sectors past the limit will write to three sectors past the
START of the disk. If you imagine a badly fragmented disk with FAT chains for
a large file leaping about to different addresses chasing after non-
contiguous chunks of that file, then a disk write is like a scattergun firing
bytes at high speed into whatever is there, often a very large number of
files getting heavily corrupted in a few seconds.

It happened to me once, and I consoled myself with lugubrious analogies to
the St Valentines Day Massacre. :) I lost a LOT of (fortunately unimportant)
media files that day.

To fix the problem in W98 you need to check that the BIOS suports 48-bit LBA
addressing for ALL of the ATA devices supported, or get a PCI card host
adapter that does this. That takes care of real mode DOS. Then you need a
patched version of ESDI_506.PDR in the IOSUBSYS directory. There's more than
one alternative out there, but I chose Rudolph Loew's as I think it's the
tidiest one, and his LBA testing tools (free, provided in the demo patch
download) are the best I saw. I've seen other tools fail, and one of those
was made by Intel!). His patch costs 10 bucks but given what it does, it's
easily worth it. Google 'Patch137' if you're interested in trying it. Get it
even if just for its test tools...

[Tim Meddick]

If you send me a list of Win_ME files that you need - I will ZIP them and
[e]mail them back to you (as long as it does not amount to over 1MB).

You can send the list to the reply address of this post (if you like)...

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)

Post by j***@myplace.com

Post by 98 Guy

Most definately take the DEFRAG out of WinME.

Yes. Common knowledge.

I never heard about changing Scandisk and Fdisk ?
Why would that be needed?

First of all, there's DOS-mode scandisk (scandisk.exe) and windows-mode
GUI scandisk (which is actually 2 files - scandskw.exe and
diskmaint.dll).
The win-98se dos version of scandisk (scandisk.exe) works just fine -
the largest FAT32 hard drive I've scanned with it is 1.5 tb.
The win-98se version of defrag, scandskw.exe/diskmaint.dll are inferior
to their win-ME counterparts because they can't be used on volumes
larger than 128 gb. The ME versions can. It has to do with the max
number of clusters that a volume has - WinME versions have a higher
limit (but perhaps not much more than 200 gb).

So that explains why I could not format or scandisk a 320GB USB
external drive in Win98. I finally had to reboot to Win2000 to do it.
While I could swear that I have a WinME CD, I sure can not find it.
Can these files be downloaded from anywhere?

Post by 98 Guy
As for fdisk - what you want is a Microsoft update to fdisk.exe (dated
may 2000). It can partition drives up to 500 gb in size. Anything

Where can I download this? Or I should say does MS still have it on
their site?

Post by 98 Guy
larger, you'll need third-party hard drive tools - or you can find
something called "Free Fdisk" (I can post a link if you can't find it).
The largest drive I've tested it on was 1.5 tb and it works fine on
that.
Format.com (from win-98se) also works fine on FAT32 volumes up to at
least 1.5 tb.

Hmmmm, it did not work on that USB drive I have....

Post by 98 Guy
And these are SATA drives that I'm talking about. I don't mess around
with IDE drives larger than 80 gb.

Why not? Why are SATA better?

Post by 98 Guy

What parts of Dos are missing from WinME? Anyone know?

http://www.dewassoc.com/support/winme/real_dos.htm
If I recall correctly, Microsoft somehow handicapped ME from being able
to actually format a floppy disk so that it could boot DOS (ie - they
prevented the user from being able to put DOS system files onto the
floppy). Not sure why they went to such lengths to make DOS so hidden
or "copy-able" or accessible on ME.
We've had discussions from time to time on MSFN.org about the pro's and
con's of ME vs 98. The consensus is that there are some deep-rooted
stability issues with ME that make it less desirable than win-98.
Win-98's USB handling can be made just as good as ME.
ME has one solid advantage over 98 in that it can natively handle 1.95
gb of ram, whereas win-98's upper limit is something like 1.195 gb.
This is without using third-party patches to increase the amount of RAM
that win-98 can make use of. But again, many people feel that ME's
quirky instability trumps the ability to use more ram than win-98.
You can't boot win-98 if the computer has more than 1.5 gb of ram
installed (ie say 2 gb) unless you use up some of that ram by creating a
RAM drive as part of your config.sys. Or if you use himemX.exe (instead
of himem.sys). Himemx.exe has a /switch that let's you set the amount
of ram that you "expose" to win-98.