China DOS Union

To make the system support hard disks larger than 137GB, the following conditions must be met:
1. Chipset: some southbridge chipsets that support the BIG DRIVES specification: VIA VT8233A/8235 and later, SiS 961 and later, INTEL ICH1/ICH2/ICH4/ICH5 and the latest series can all support hard disks larger than 137GB.

2. Motherboard BIOS:
For those using Windows 9x/Me, if you want the motherboard to support hard disks larger than 137GB, the motherboard BIOS must support 48-bit LBA. Generally speaking, BIOS releases from around 2003 can support it. If you are using Windows 2000/XP, then a BIOS with 48-bit LBA support is not necessarily required.

If you are not sure whether your motherboard supports 48-bit addressing, the simplest way is to use the “Intel 48-bit LBA Test Program” (a test program from Intel for checking 48-bit LBA),
ftp://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/48lbachk.exe
It can detect whether the motherboard BIOS supports 48-bit LBA addressing, thereby determining whether your motherboard BIOS supports hard disks larger than 137GB.

Some methods for using hard disks larger than 137G under WIN2000/XP (strongly recommend using WIN2000 SP4/XP SP1+48BIT LBA patch, or SP2 operating systems; WIN9X is strongly not recommended).
Absolutely do not use old versions of DM, PQ, and other software that do not support 48BIT LBA for partitioning.
First use the win2000/xp installation CD to partition the system partition, enter the system, install the system patches, and then use the 2000/xp disk manager to partition.

1) Intel chipsets
Older chipsets such as the 810, 815, and 820 series need the operating system to be upgraded, and IAA must also be installed.
The 845, 850, and 860 series chipsets only need the operating system to be upgraded, but installing IAA is strongly recommended.
After the 860, only upgrading the operating system is enough.
Upgrade WIN2000 to SP4
If winxp is SP1, you also need the Atapi.sys file with version number 5.1.2600.1135. This file is in patch Q331958.
Patch description:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;;331958
Patch download address:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=zh-cn&FamilyID=b997cc5f-4483-4edc-a17e-6f659a033b0d
It is best to upgrade to SP2

Note: during installation, please first create only one primary partition, and leave the others alone
After installation, use the disk manager in 2000 to partition the remaining unallocated space
This way you can fully use 160G
WINXP SP1 is the same

WINXP SP2 and WIN20003 can partition directly during installation

2) For chipsets from other manufacturers such as VIA, SIS, NVIDIA, etc., besides installing the corresponding latest chipset drivers, please try to use win2000sp4, winxp sp2, or winxp+sp1＋Q331958 patch.

3) Maxtor hard disks have an official patch that can solve this problem, but whether other brands of hard disks have corresponding patches, everyone can try looking for them
http://www.lander.com.cn/download_software_show.asp?id=15

Problems with using hard disks larger than 137G under WIN9X systems
If Windows9X that does not support 48-bit LBA is installed in a disk partition, and that partition was previously created by an operating system that can recognize 48-bit LBA, such as Windows XP, then data corruption may occur. But if there is no 48-bit LBA compatible BIOS, then only the first 137GB of the hard disk is addressable, and the rest of the hard disk cannot be used.
Everyone is welcome to discuss

Even if the BIOS supports above 137GB, can DOS support it?

I have XP SP2
The BIOS does not support above 137GB, but in XP I created a 1G partition in the final space, and so far there has been no problem using files on it.
I also didn't install anything with 48BIT support...

Originally posted by GOTOmsdos at 2006-8-25 10:09 PM:
Even if the BIOS supports above 137GB, can DOS support it?

Of course. As long as the BIOS supports it, and DOS itself also supports accessing hard drives in LBA mode (such as MS-DOS 7.1), then 137GB is not a problem at all, and there is absolutely no need to worry about it.

If the BIOS supports it, can DOS6.22 support it?

Originally posted by GOTOmsdos at 2006-8-25 11:15 PM:
If the BIOS supports it, can DOS6.22 support it?

Of course not! DOS6.x does not even support LBA hard drives above 8GB, let alone 137GB! In other words, with BIOS support as a prerequisite, as long as DOS supports above 8GB it will automatically support above 137GB as well (that is what I meant above by “and DOS itself also supports accessing hard drives in LBA mode”). On the other hand, if it does not even support above 8GB, then obviously it cannot possibly support above 137GB.

Originally posted by wang6610 at 2006-8-25 17:20:
Absolutely do not use old versions of DM, PQ, etc. that do not support LBA 48BIT for partitioning.

How old is "old version" here?

For example, DM9.56

Then what about other partitioning software? For example Partition Magic, SPFDISK.
From the way this article puts it, it seems you can only use Windows' own partitioning tools to partition.

There are articles online pointing out that DM9.56 cannot be used to initialize hard drives larger than 137G, while DM9.57 can.


For Partition Magic and SPFDISK, that depends on their documentation and related bug reports...

[ Last edited by wang6610 on 2006-9-1 at 15:02 ]

Someone else had a 160G hard drive, but under WIN2000 it only showed 120G, and he didn't notice. One day under DOS I used PQ8.05 and discovered there was still 40G unused, so I added it to the last partition. Before that, he had also used PQ8.05 under WIN2000, yet didn't discover this problem.

Can PC DOS support it?
Thanks!