W95 OSR2, FAT32, and dual-boot?

Hi all

I have an old 486 system which is currently dual boot, by itself into W95, or (using floppy) DOS6.22/W3.11

the HDD is 850MB (using dynamic drive overlay to overcome 528MB motherboard limit), the top 17MB is partitioned off as D: to hold rather a lot of small files: a library of icons (many only 766 bytes) and CADD component files (typically 280 or 533 bytes) - lots and lots of them.

using FAT16 I'm getting cluster sizes of 16,384 bytes for C: and 2,048 bytes for D: - when I set up the partition sizes I was trying for the smallest cluster size on D: to hold the small files without incurring excessive waste. I did try playing around making D: smaller, but it didn't work, the thing lapsed into FAT12!

soon I should have a spare 4GB HDD, I was considering putting this in the PC as it's really pushed for disk space. But if I have to stay with FAT16 I won't really gain a lot - just waste a lot more space due to (presumably) 64k clusters.

I read in another thread that Windows95 (OSR2) will work OK on a FAT32 drive - which might be the key to solving this one? But raises questions...

1. How to FAT32 the C: partition of the new HDD in the first place - as there seems to be no drive converter in the W95 OSR2 (I find nothing like CVT1.EXE and no mention of FAT32 in the W95 help)

2. Assuming that I've put the DOS6.22 and W3.11 onto (say) D: (FAT16); would they recognise the files on the FAT32 partition C:

any thoughts / advice, I would be very grateful.

Best Wishes, HJ

 

DOS and Windows 95b will both "see" FAT 16 and FAT 32 partitions, so no problems there.
To get your new drive formatted FAT32 with the smaller cluster size, use a Win98 startup diskette, and select YES to the first question when doing the initial fdisk on it.
You can then mount it as slave, or put the OS on it, whatever you like.

 

Hi reboot

thanks for your reply, this is good news indeed; this is one very busy 486 which has served me well for many years now...

...and with luck is about to get a new lease of life!

I really want to put M$ Office back onto it but there's not enough room at the moment - also I like the idea of a clean install, the W95's never been the same since it had an argument with Norton...

Good Luck & Best Wishes, HJ.