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I have a formatted a 2 terabyte SSD with a program explicitly called "fat32 format", set it active, I put the files of a Win98 bootCD on it, but it failed booting with a black screen and a blinking cursor in the left upper corner, but not exactly. I had the same issue earlier with an 64GB USB drive which I fixed and it worked (successfully formatted with recent HP USB tool).

I think I need to re-format it with another program in Windows 10. Since it's 2TB, DISKPART and FDISK don't work.

Or is there some setting of the drive I gotta tweak?

Edit: It Worked! Thanks to Barlop, I formatted the SSD with an USB (looks like Format.com did support 2TB format), plugged the USB out, and I was successfully able to boot from SCSI SSD! To prove the boot was successful: https://9tbxmw.am.files.1drv.com/y4pICd7rCU24Z6GUa18ulyaomUlRN9fT2YMppZ7VfyEsO60UJDpGL0MM75YHT7MZKZPmVuTR4XaHXXtxWUO3dEHeC3vd9v9IpyfI5opBti14vqZ2-KjbWAdAfCUfLUHL65K6cEOf_Cm9HC4JnqkHwyECe2onT9RdwcllGE2-xRme574VVDhJULpGVrL31LQDPD6T6tVS7aumjmkvWwQEXWy5Q/2019-09-03Error.png

When I direct command.com to D:\command.com (my USB) and enter "C:" followed by "cd foldername" I get this message (and press F):

Not ready reading drive C
Abort, Retry, Fail?
Fail on INT 24 - foldername

I guess this is a different issue and am really happy that you guys helped me out!

Ciel Ruby
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  • Not with LBA48, that supports drives with the size of exactly 2 Terabytes. – Ciel Ruby Aug 30 '19 at 14:39
  • I don't think neither Dos nor Windows 98 supports drives that high. I don't even think they supported FAT32 at that time. DOS is a 16 bit OS, and given that Windows 98 runs on-top of DOS, I'm fairly sure it suffers the same problem. Yes, Windows 98 is the first OS that supports FAT32, but as it is build upon DOS, the bootdrive cannot be FAT32, but only FAT16. You will need 2 partitions. – LPChip Aug 30 '19 at 14:41
  • Then it would support the size of exactly 2 GB maximum and that's not the case, thanks to 32 LBA48. – Ciel Ruby Aug 30 '19 at 15:32
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    Doesn't help this question, [but facts are facts](https://www.howtogeek.com/187631/how-was-multi-tasking-possible-in-older-versions-of-windows/). Windows 9x ***DID NOT*** "run on DOS". It used DOS as a bootloader and legacy device layer (through a 32bit driver). – Señor CMasMas Aug 30 '19 at 15:47
  • Thank you for making that clear! – Ciel Ruby Aug 30 '19 at 15:51
  • Windows 98 came with Dos 7 which supported FAT32. The file system supported 2TB drives but I don't know if DOS 7 or Windows 98 did. But in 1998 this was academic as such drives did not exist. Then there are the interface issues. I assume you are using either SATA or USB and Windows 98 and DOS 7 natively supported neither. – LMiller7 Aug 30 '19 at 16:23
  • Fortunately, my SSD seems to be connected via SCSI, not SATA, so it should be able to work. [Windows 98 Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98#Other_device_support_improvements) – Ciel Ruby Aug 30 '19 at 16:38
  • @SeñorCMasMas DOS isn't a boot loader though, it's an operating system, and you could boot Wn9X only as far as DOS if you wanted. with editing msdos.sys and setting bootgui=0 logo=0 https://www.computerhope.com/msdossys.htm – barlop Sep 02 '19 at 03:55
  • You still have too many variables.. Start by making a partition of just 1GB – barlop Sep 02 '19 at 03:58
  • Boot off your DOS USB and format the drive with the format command(FORMAT.COM) on the USB stick, and make it a system drive with the SYS.COM command. Then you only need to expand the partition. Expanding the partition can perhaps be done booting WinPE and using disk management.. Or, by booting Ubuntu and Gparted. (Gparted is a program that can resize partitions) – barlop Sep 02 '19 at 04:08
  • @barlop re msdos.sys, and bootscan=0 – barlop Sep 02 '19 at 16:09
  • Thank you very much for your comments. This makes sense to me. Altough I heard you should never create a primary partition on a SSD with Windows 9X, I've heard using format.com on a primary partition created by a newer OS should be fine. Hearing that expanding is possible after installation makes that even greater (I am able to do this with my windows 10 hard-drive). – Ciel Ruby Sep 03 '19 at 06:41
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because the author has indicated they have resolved their own problem according to the last edit to the question – Ramhound Sep 03 '19 at 23:37
  • Thank you very much! – Ciel Ruby Sep 04 '19 at 06:44

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