It's really not about corrupted data ... it's whether the BIOS and the IDE controller drivers (chipset drivers) support the ability to access the disk space above the 127GB limitation. That why I mentioned that there is a "hard" limit with the native, default Win98 drivers. They don't support 48-bit LBA. Which means, in layman's terms, that they don't support drives over 137GB, and can't access free space above 127GB.
Just because Partition Magic can recognize the size of the entire drive doesn't necessarily mean that Win98 natively has the same ability. You'll need updated chipset/IDE controller drivers to "see" the whole drive, if you intend to have only one, large partition. However, this is assuming that the manufacturer/distributor of the chipset has added 48-bit LBA support to the drivers, so that Win9x can access free space on a hard drive larger than 127GB. Some have ... some haven't. Intel has, for the most part, and I'm under the impression that VIA has done the same thing. Although I am not a big fan of VIA chipsets, and I have had some trouble in the past getting VIA drivers to install correctly, due to Windows File Protection. Which shouldn't be as much of an issue in Win9x, as it can be in newer operating systems.
And remember, with just one partition larger than 127GB, those 16-bit native utilities built into Win98 will not function correctly. And there's not anything you can do to work around this limitation. That's one of the handicaps when you use an older OS that is not truly 32-bit and/or 64-bit.
Personally, I'd partition the drive in half, and that would solve the problem, before it ever began. On the same note, I can't think of any particular reason why someone would need (or want) a 160GB partition with the FAT32 file system, anyway.
For instance, if you are going to use the drive for video editing, FAT32 has a 4GB file size limitation, and that makes it more difficult to work with large .avi files. And effectively defeats one of the purposes of having one large FAT32 partition, IMHO.
And then there's the wasted free space to consider, due to the large clusters.
Basically, how the drive should be partitioned depends on what you intend to do with it. But two 80GB partitions should be just as useful as one 160GB partition. Or the drive could be partitioned even farther, to the point where the cluster sizes are smaller, which saves on slack space.
But you need to at least have one partition that is smaller than 127GB, regardless of what you choose to do with the rest of the free space, if you want to avoid having to re-partition again in the future. Imagine, for example, having a bad shutdown that causes Scandisk to run at the boot ... but it cannot correct any errors in the file system because it can't access any of the free space over 127GB.
While I haven't tried it personally, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some kind of data corruption after the utility attempted to run, like trundicated files. To be honest with you, I'm not sure if it would try to run and then crap out, or just not be able to run at all. You could ask Crashman ... he might know. I don't load Win98 on newer systems these days, but I recall that he still installs the OS regularly. Although I'd have to assume that he's using Win98SE, instead of the earlier incarnation.
Imagine, too, having to wait for many hours while a third-party utility has to defrag an entire 160GB FAT32 partition. Even if the partition is only half full, if there are many small files, this easily becomes an overnight scenario. And you wouldn't have any choice about using another tool, because Windows Defrag couldn't do anything with a partition that large.
Give some thought as to how you want to do this, but I'd advise against having a single partition for the drive. Just to make things simpler, in the long run.
Toey
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