Does Win95 need/work with Ontrack Disk Manager?
Erwin Brko
larger than 528 MB (I have a 1 GB IBM drive), so I've been using
Ontrack's Disk Manager. Now I want to upgrade to Win95. Assuming I
reformat my drive with Win95, do I still need to use something like
Disk Manager, or can Win95 handle the 1 GB disk directly?
The Win95 Resource Kit seems to imply that it can handle large drives
even with old IDE controllers:
"Windows 95 also provides enhanced support for large media using
logical block addressing, including hard disks with more than 1024
cylinders. Extensions to the INT 13 disk controller support are
provided in the protected-mode disk handler drviers for this support.
(Windows 3.1 did not provide this support in its 32-bit disk access
drivers.)
Any ideas?
Peter Herweijer
>I have an old IDE controller that doesn't directly support hard disks
>larger than 528 MB (I have a 1 GB IBM drive), so I've been using
Nitpick: the _controller_ supports disks of up to 137GB. The hardware
is not the problem here. See the EIDE FAQ for details.
>Ontrack's Disk Manager. Now I want to upgrade to Win95. Assuming I
>reformat my drive with Win95, do I still need to use something like
>Disk Manager, or can Win95 handle the 1 GB disk directly?
It isn't so simple. Yes, Win95 has all the bells and whistles to handle
137GB disks, *BUT* you won't be able to use those capabilities just like
that. The reason is that Win95 is bootstrapped from DOS, and that Win95
always keeps a real (v86) mode DOS environment behind the scenes just in
case. For this reason, if your BIOS doesn't make your full drive
available to DOS, Win95 won't be able to change that. In this sense you
still need DM.
I haven't been able to check, but suspect that drives that are supported
by Win95 but not by your BIOS (ie. which aren't entered in the CMOS
setup) are an exception. Of course these drives won't be visible from a
DOS compatibility session, only from Win95 and a DOS box.
If you have only one drive, this won't help you and you'll have to
continue using DM.
I could do with a confirmation of denial of this. Anybody tried or knows
for sure?
>The Win95 Resource Kit seems to imply that it can handle large drives
>even with old IDE controllers:
>"Windows 95 also provides enhanced support for large media using
>logical block addressing, including hard disks with more than 1024
>cylinders. Extensions to the INT 13 disk controller support are
>provided in the protected-mode disk handler drviers for this support.
>(Windows 3.1 did not provide this support in its 32-bit disk access
>drivers.)
Yep, read that. Win95 even adds extended int13 support to get past the
8GB limit. What it doesn't say is that you will be able to use all those
great features under all circumstances.
- Peter
John Wehman
>
>brko...@hookup.net (Erwin Brko) writes:
[stuff about DM deleted...]
> >The Win95 Resource Kit seems to imply that it can handle large drives
> >even with old IDE controllers:
> >"Windows 95 also provides enhanced support for large media using
> >logical block addressing, including hard disks with more than 1024
> >cylinders. Extensions to the INT 13 disk controller support are
> >provided in the protected-mode disk handler drviers [sic] for this support.
> >(Windows 3.1 did not provide this support in its 32-bit disk access
> >drivers.)
>
>Yep, read that. Win95 even adds extended int13 support to get past the
>8GB limit. What it doesn't say is that you will be able to use all those
>great features under all circumstances.
>
I just wanted to point something out here...Microsoft wrote this to inform
developers that virtual hard disk support was available for drives >504MB.
"Virtual" hard disk support. ie "32-bit". NOT translation to create a new
partition record. As far as I know, one cannot install Win95 on a brand new
hard drive. Only one that has been fdisked by DOS. This means that Win95
relies on the partition record created by DOS, and if your BIOS does not
translate, then forget getting >504MB in Win95.
The above paragraph from Microsoft is somewhat misleading...the premise behind
it is that protected mode (virtual mode, 32-bit mode, etc) will be available
for large drives. This means that Win95 will be accessing the hard drive
through its own drivers, bypassing the native BIOS, and enabling the software
to stay in protected mode, adding a slight performance gain. The nice thing
they state, is that there is support for INT13 extensions, which should speed
up hard drive data requests, due to the lessening of overhead associated with
mathematical conversion of CHS to LBA and back again. This is what they claim
was not in Windows 3.1 (and it wasn't). Some third-party addons (ontrack.386,
mh32bit.386, etc) added LBA and R/W multiple to the original 32-bit Windows
driver (wdctrl).
> - Peter
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John F. Wehman
jwe...@got.net
john_...@notes.seagate.com
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Andy Nguyen
>I have an old IDE controller that doesn't directly support hard disks
>larger than 528 MB (I have a 1 GB IBM drive), so I've been using
>Ontrack's Disk Manager. Now I want to upgrade to Win95. Assuming I
>reformat my drive with Win95, do I still need to use something like
>Disk Manager, or can Win95 handle the 1 GB disk directly?
>The Win95 Resource Kit seems to imply that it can handle large drives
>even with old IDE controllers:
>"Windows 95 also provides enhanced support for large media using
>logical block addressing, including hard disks with more than 1024
>cylinders. Extensions to the INT 13 disk controller support are
>provided in the protected-mode disk handler drviers for this support.
>(Windows 3.1 did not provide this support in its 32-bit disk access
>drivers.)
>Any ideas?
It should work fine with DM. I was able to install Win 95 on an
existing Disk Manager setup of DOS/Windows. You don't need to
reformat your hard drive to do this, but if you do reformat the drive,
you can still use Disk Manager. Just make a Win 95 boot disk (either
through Win 95 setup or by using FORMAT A: /S from Win 95 DOS prompt)
and use that disk when installing Disk Manager. No problems with it
on a WD 1280. Works the same way as DOS.