Question : Problem: FDISK will not work on a 120 GB Seagate Drive under 98SE

I got the FDISK for HDs over 64MB under Windows 98SE from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/263044

The FDISK that came with 98SE only saw 48 GB on a new out-of-the box unformatted 120 GB dirve. The drive was installed however (ie. BIOS saw it and Device Manager saw it). But this 48 GB result was expected as the original 98SE Fdisk does not support drives over 64MB.Plus the link above says the original Fdisk will see the correct drive size minus 64 MB and 120 - 64 is 56 MB which is close to 48 MB.

Unfortunately the new FDISK only saw 11 GB on the same 120 GB drive, even though it saw correctly all the partitions (11 partitions) and their correct size on the 80 GB Boot drive. However the 80 GB drive was made in 2001 and the 120 GB drive in 2005 and that may be relevant in some way here (For example, SEE THE NEXT PARAGRAPH BELOW) . Both drives are ATA 100.  The new FDISK was installed as an update to Windows 98SE because that is the only choice Microsoft provides for the installation. It can NOT just be installed as a single new program.

PLEASE NOTE THIS: The link above from Microsoft says the following
"This hotfix is not designed for 48-bit logical block addressing (LBA) hard disks...." and the Seagate Install instructions say  "Within the System Setup program (i.e the BIOS).... eable LBA .... if given the option". Note: There was no such OPTION in the BIOS but it may have been SET ALREADY, I do not remember which is the case as I post this question.

This CLEARLY tells us the Seagate 120GB drive in question supports LBA. It does not say 48-bit LBA however which is what the quoted Microsoft restriction above refers to.

So IS THIS IN FACT THE WHOLE PROBLEM HERE??? That the new Seagate drive supports 48-bit LBA (or maybe that is the only LBA there is???)  and so the new Fdisk will not work with it but the 2001 Maxtor drive did not support 48-bit LBA and that is why Fdisk sees it correctlyas 80 GB total size??

Also in case you are going to reply that something is wrong with the 120 GB drive, that would be incorrect. Because I successfully partitioned and formated it into 13 partitions with Seagate's DiskWizard utility (see below) and then got the partitions to work correctly with the customers security camera app that writes camera videos to the partitions.

Please provide a link to a FDISK (or OTHER partition creation utility) that will work on the new 120 GB Seagate drive supporting LBA so I can use it to partition the drive into 13 partitions for data. The 120 GB drive will not have Windows and will not be bootable; it is a 2nd drive.

Another solution would be to tell me how to DISABLE LBA in the BIOS ***IF** that will get around the Microsoft restriction PLUS that will work !!! Maybe if I do that the drive will fail to function !!!

Note: Seagate provides a partition creation utility DiskWizard that works BUT
(a) You must create each partition separately which takes time.
(b) The partions can NOT be created the same size no matter how hard you try.
(c) If you want the partition sizes to be close to the same, the interface is a real pain to use. The slider used to set the partition size is EXTREMELY sensitive to slight mouse motion. So if you want 7 GB partitions and you move the mouse ever so slightly you now have 8.5 GB partition or a 10 GB partition!!!!

I have heard that FDISK does not have all the problems that Seagate's DiskWizard does so if you can supply
(A) a different link to a FDISK that will SEE the 120 GB size, noting the POTENTIAL LBA problem, please let me know
OR
(B) another disk partition utitlity other than FDISK and Seagate Diskwizard that will work under Windows 98SE and will ALSO work with 120 GB drives that support LBA.

Note: The motherboard in question supports 120 GB and 80 GB drives. My final config had both working fine.

Regards,
  Michael Gross

Answer : Problem: FDISK will not work on a 120 GB Seagate Drive under 98SE

I've not sure what "Diskwizard" did in terms of structuring the disk.  I never recommend using the disk manufacturer's utilities for anything except hardware tests on the drives -- they all have their own (often incompatible) ideas of what to do with the structure; and sometimes it makes life difficult when you're trying to use "normal" disk management utilities.   Not sure that's what's happened here, but it could have something to do with it.   The updated FDisk SHOULD work fine with the 120GB drive; so either (a) there is some interaction with whatever DiskWizard did; or (b) somehow you've not implemented the FDisk patch correctly.

In any event, ANY disk over 8GB has to use logical block addressing -- the original LBA only used 28-bits (that's why there's a size limit:  2^28 sectors x 512 bytes/sector = 137,438,953,472 bytes); the newer 48-bit LBA overcomes this and allows MUCH larger sizes.

As I've noted in another related question, the Boot-It NG utility might be a better choice than FDisk for managing your partition structure.   But first I'd like to "see" how the disk is currently structured; so I'll wait until you post the results of Boot-It's scan before commenting further.