> Let's say I boot a networkable DOS disk and try to save a file larger than
> 2GB to an NTFS volume on a server.  Will that work?

Each OS I refer to is "DOS," which is merely an acronym for Disk Operating System. My comments pertain to variations of MS-DOS.

Versions of MS-DOS 7 and later (Windows 95 and above) support FAT32… Under these versions the 4GB file size limit will apply.

MS-DOS versions prior to DOS 7.0 (e.g., 5.0, 6.x) are subject to the FAT16 file size limit of 2GB.

You ask what the file size limit would be if you "boot a DOS disk"… As noted, this would depend on what version of DOS you're booting.

The file creation process will fail with an "Access Denied" error if the file size exceeds the limit of the particular OS you're running.

Regarding your other question about creating or copying a 2GB file to an NTFS partition… This is definitely no problem, as the theoretical maximum file size under an NTFS, as previously mentioned, is 16 exabytes.

The number of bytes in an exabyte is two to the sixtieth power, or 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes. "Exa" is a prefix meaning one billion billion, which is the same as one quintillion. Two the sixtieth power is really a little more than a quintillion. So an exabyte is approximately a billion gigabytes. Thus 16 exabytes is approximately 16 billion gigabytes.

This is in theory because the size of an NTFS volume is also limited by the practical implementation of the OS, as well as restrictions due to the partitions cluster size.

It's also theoretical because nobody has ever been able to try it. But on an NTFS the file size is limited only by the size of the volume.

Also note that if you boot with a disk having a version of DOS preceding DOS 7.x, you won't be able to see a FAT32 partition to access a file, regardless of its size.

But if you intend creating or copying files of this size to a server on a network, I recommend you bring a lunch!

rin1010

> I know that the partition size limit under FAT32 is 2 terrabytes.  What I
> DON'T know is the maximum size Windows 98Second Edition can handle.

Now there's a simple question with a complicated answer if I ever saw one.

Originally, Windows 98SE was limited to 64GB, but this was not an OS limitation at all. The limit is caused by the disk tools shipped with Win98SE.

FDISK.EXE shipping with Win98 had internal limitations in the coding that, if you had a drive over 64GB, would display the drive size minus 64GB.

You can get an updated version of FDISK here: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q263044

This increases FDISK's support up to the limit where you need to use LBA (Large Block Addressing) mode, 137 GB.

Scandisk and Defrag also does not work if you have a partition over 127GB.

So:

Boot Partition should NOT be over 127 GB, but Win98SE can use partitions up to the FAT32 barrier if you use third party tools for disk management.

documented on: 11/14/2004 by SunKing