Seagate ST34311A, ST32112A manual Addressing drive-capacity limitations, Mbyte limit, Gbtye limit

Medalist 8421, 6421, 4311 and 2112, Rev. A 11

Addressing drive-capacity limitations

Some DOS-based computers and operating systems are not designed to accommodate large-capacity hard disc drives. The most common system limitations are listed below.

528-Mbyte limit

The BIOS in some older computers cannot support drives with capacities greater than 528 Mbytes. Seagate provides free Disk Manager software with your drive to overcome this limitation. Alternatively, you can purchase a hard drive controller or a BIOS upgrade that supports drives with capacities greater than 528 Mbytes.

The 32-bit disk access feature in Windows 3.1 does not work with drives that have capacities greater than 528 Mbytes. If you want to use 32-bit disk access with Windows 3.1, see the file SEG32BIT.TXT, located on your DiscWizard diskette, for further information.

8.4-Gbtye limit

If your drive’s capacity is greater than 8.4 Gbytes, the capacity may exceed the limits of your system BIOS and operating sys- tem. DOS and Windows operating systems and most system BIOS limit the drive partitions to 8.4 Gbytes per physical drive. Because of this limitation, a 32-bit file allocation table (FAT32) is needed to support drive capacities greater than 8.4 Gbytes.

To achieve your drive’s full capacity, you need a Windows operat- ing system that supports FAT32 and device support for drive capacities greater than 8.4 Gbytes, from one of the following: