At 12:24 PM 3/1/02, you wrote:

>I went one step further and wiped the hard drive, allowing me to create a
>single 10GB NTFS partition. There is a little trick there, as 2GB seems to
>be the limit of a partition that NT will let you set up: after formatting
>the 2GB partition, I installed software called "Partition Magic" that
>allows you to manipulate partitions.

>So, with a single 10GB partion running on NT, I have had no problems. The
>software rarely crashes, the computer is networked, and I'm able to
>multitask with other software packages.

That's amazing, and perhaps something to try. My system is set up as
several 2.0 gig FAT systems. Since I use the computer for only ISODAT I
seldom push even 60% capacity on my data drive, but perhaps running with
NTFS is a key to the puzzle.

One word of warning, however. There is a reason why NT initially only comes
up with a 2gb (or according this a 4gb partition) is as follows

>During the text based portion of the NT installation, it is possible to
>create and format partitions. The maximum size for an NTFS partition is
>very large (16 exabytes), however the maximum size for a FAT partition
>under NT is 4GB (2GB under DOS). If you format a partition as NTFS during
>NT installation, it originally formats it as FAT and then converts it in
>the final stages of the NT installation, and this you are limited to a
>maximum partition size of 4GB during the NT installation.

There are ways around this, without resorting to Partition Magic (which is
great, BTW, and I recommend it as well as a good tool to have). Details and
the entire article can be found at
http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13876

The danger occurs with boot drives larger than 8 gig, as follows

>It is important to note that the System partition (holding ntldr,
>boot.ini, etc.) MUST be entirely within the first 7.8Gb  of any disk (if
>this is the same as the boot partition this limit applies) This is due to
>the BIOS int 13H interface used by ntldr to bootstrap up to the point
>where it can drive the native HDD IDE or SCSI. int 13H presents a 24 bit
>parameter for cylinder/head/sector for a drive. If say by defragmentation
>the system are moved beyond this point you will not be able to boot the
>system.

There are more cavats about this in the complete article at
http://www.windows2000faq.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=13720

This is a great site in general and covers NT 4, W2000, and XP. www.ntfaq.com

Howard



Howard Sanford
919-513-3039
North Carolina State University
Dept. of Soil Science
Box 7619
3114 Williams Hall
Raleigh, NC 27695
http://www.soil.ncsu.edu/