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142 Managing partitions using GDisk
Support for Large Hard Disks
Support for Large Hard Disks
GDisk includes large disk drive support for IDE and SCSI hard drives (disks that
exceed the 1024 cylinder BIOS limitation, which translates to a capacity greater
than 7.8 GB). GDisk can directly access hard disks through the IDE controller or
ASPI interface provided by an ASPI driver. Take care when creating partitions for
operating systems with inherent partition size limitations.
Remember the following information when you create partitions for use in
Windows 95/98:
■ On a system with a PC BIOS that does not support interrupt 13h extended
disk services, ensure that the partitions created can be used as intended.
When a primary partition or extended partition starts or ends past the 7.8
GB limit of the hard drive, it is not accessible on such systems in Windows or
in DOS-only mode. This affects all logical partitions contained within an
extended partition that starts or ends past the limit.
Remember the following information when you create partitions for use in
Windows NT:
■ According to the Microsoft Knowledge Base, Windows NT NTFS bootable
partitions cannot exceed 7.8 GB (8,455,716,864 bytes). This information is
detailed in the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article “Windows NT Boot Process
and Hard Disk Constraints,” Article ID: Q114841.
Non-bootable NTFS partitions do not have this size limitation.
■ Windows NT cannot start from partitions that start or end beyond the 1024-
cylinder boundary. If this condition exists, Windows NT reports a “Boot
Record Signature AA55 Not Found” error message.
Windows NT does not support drives larger than 7.8 GB unless you install
Service Pack 4 or apply the ATAPI hot fix to Service Pack 3. This information is
included in the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article “IBM DTTA-351010 10.1 GB
Drive Capacity Is Inaccurate,” Article ID: Q183654.