What's the largest HDD that can be used with Win2k on a T21?

[mayidunk]

Hi All,

Can anyone tell me what is the largest HDD I can use? Is there a partition size limit when using Win2k? I installed a Seagate Momentus 100Gb drive, and restored the system using the rescue/recovery disks for Win2k and am wondering why my primary partition is only 62Gb!

Thanks...
Bob

[slagmi]

Intersting..
Bob, did the recovery disks create a FAT32 Partiton?

[mayidunk]

Intersting..
Bob, did the recovery disks create a FAT32 Partiton?

It (one recovery disk...) created a 64Gb fat32 partition. I completed the install, updated everything, and happened to stumble upon the Disk Management tool while searching the help files for more info on disk partitions. Using this tool, I saw that I did, indeed, have more unused space on the drive, but that it was only seeing about 94Gb, not 100Gb or even close to it. So, I created an extended, 30Gb NTFS partition with compression, just to experiment with it as I'm seriously considering converting the primary partition to NTFS, and I want to see how Norton Utils handles it.

I figured that the reason why I only got 64gigs was that the tool that IBM uses to lay the recovery image down on the drive can only scale the image to drives no larger than 60GB. Looking back, I now realize that I did see that unused 30gigs when I booted off of a Win98 CD and used fdisk, but had misinterpreted what I was looking at at the time, leading me to believe that I may have gotten a 60gig drive in a box that said it was a 100gig drive! Anyway, now I'm looking around the web to see if I can find out why I'm missing 6gigs.

Any light you can shed is much appreciated, as I've got more to learn about these things. As for the installation, it's quite stable and looks to be trouble free right now. I was able to apply the SP4 update and security rollup without a hitch, but auto-update wants me to DL and install about 50Mb more, and since I'm using a dial-up, that's gonna take a while.

BTW, the rescue and recovery disk is truly worth the price of admission! When I consider the time and effort it would've taken me to attempt recreating the initial drive image, I realize that paying for that disk was actually well worth it. Though the drivers and such are readily available from IBM/Lenovo, there's still some software that is not available, and I'm not quite sure that they provide everything you'd need to recreate the image, as a lot of what they offer are upgrades to software and drivers that came with the machine. I saw no facility for downloading the original software or drivers in those cases. YMM, I suppose, but it was worth it for me, anyway!

Thanks,
Bob

[slagmi]

Yea it's a limitation of the recovery program associated with the fact that it creates a FAT32 partition. Industry-wide, not just IBM. Logic was that the customer could easily CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS and with a little more work even set the file and registry permissions appropriate if they had a mind to. But there isn't a Microsoft way to go the other direction. Performance wise you are likely a little better off with FAT32 on a T21. Security-wise you're a little better off with NTFS. Plus there's always Partiton Magic and similar...

I agree with you about the disks. Paid for some myself. Load them, get the Lenovo Software Installer and get updates and you're set.

[mayidunk]

Yea it's a limitation of the recovery program associated with the fact that it creates a FAT32 partition. Industry-wide, not just IBM. Logic was that the customer could easily CONVERT C: /FS:NTFS and with a little more work even set the file and registry permissions appropriate if they had a mind to. But there isn't a Microsoft way to go the other direction. Performance wise you are likely a little better off with FAT32 on a T21. Security-wise you're a little better off with NTFS. Plus there's always Partiton Magic and similar...

I agree with you about the disks. Paid for some myself. Load them, get the Lenovo Software Installer and get updates and you're set.

Yeah, I'm kicking around the idea of converting the FAT32 partition to NTFS, only to make better use of the storage available (heh... like I'm ever gonna use up 100 gigs!) I had created a 30 gig extended NTFS partition, but since I have Partition Magic, I should probably find those install disks, get it onto the T21, and go crazy! Since NTFS uses fixed allocation units, I'd probably just delete the extended partition, convert the primary FAT32 partition to NTFS, and then use PM to extend it out as far as it will go. Perhaps in doing so, I'll recoup the missing 6 gigs as well.

Like Boris Karloff said, "Exthpairdeement weeth it!"



Bob

[nrj45]

Use NTFS for your system partition at least !!!
- It's a journalized file system, so when your computer crashes, it's more likely that no file errors were created.
- Less fragmentation
- local security

[slagmi]

I can't really remember my TP ever crashing. Any of them. Ever. Unless there was a hardware failure. Seriously. Hmmm... that's worthy of a new thread...