There are issues and workaround for drives beyond 2 TB but it is easier not to go beyond such capacities in the first place. I recommend using modern SATA drives, XP detects them fine and can handle large capacities.

FDISK, the partition utility that ships with DOS and early version of Windows cannot handle more than 64 GB, even if the BIOS supports larger drives.įor Windows XP you do not need to worry about any of this. However, the client’s Seagate hard disk drive still failed any disk self checks. The drive hadn’t raised any red flags in S.M.A.R.T., the self-testing system hard disk drives use to report on their own status and predict hard drive failures. Strange things happen when you use DOS or early versions of Windows to partition larger hardrives, for example a 320 GB drive. The client tried to test the hard drive’s health using SeaTools, Seagate’s hard disk diagnostic software. Most BIOS support 32 GB and so do DOS and early versions of Windows. This makes them perfect for retro gaming PCs. I use SeaTools for DOS to put a 32 GB capacity limit on modern drives. I have tested it with various Seagate and Samsung drives, quite recent ones as well with 2TB capacity. The DOS version of SeaTools should support Seagate, Maxtor and Samsung drives. Use an image burning software to burn it onto a blank CD-R.

Seagate seatools no hard drives found