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IBM PC-DOS 3.3 (MS-DOS 3.3) and my 121MB hard drive.

TwiggyTwiggy
edited July 2017 in Software
The hard drive I bought off of ebay is obviously working great.

However, IBM PC-DOS 3.3 only seems to have a maximum of 32mb for a primary dos partition. So right now I am only using a fraction of the drive's capacity.

I know there are logical dos partitions, and then extended dos partitions, etc.

But what do these mean? Is there any way to get past the 32mb limit and get pc-dos 3.3 to use my entire hard drive?

Could I create another partition that the system would recognise as a drive "D:" for example?

I have next to no experience with early DOS versions.

It even took me a while to recognise that to install PC-DOS 3.3, I had to create a primary dos partition, set it active, sys the drive, then copy the entire contents of the floppy disk to it.... yeah.... I'm used to setup programs that guide you through things.

Comments

  • TwiggyTwiggy
    Okay, I figured this out.

    I just created and extended DOS partition, then created three logical partitions in there D,E and F.

    So know my system has six drives in total

    A,B,C,D,E,F

    and all of my disk space can be used.

    I think having multiple hard disk drives (or the computer thinking it does, at least) can come in handy for file organisation and structure.

    EDIT: Also, since I solved my own problem, mods or admins, feel free to delete this thread if you see fit.
  • TotengeistTotengeist
    popeyewinter wrote:
    I think having multiple hard disk drives (or the computer thinking it does, at least) can come in handy for file organisation and structure.

    I think having your documents on a separate partition/drive from the OS is always good. I've gotten a corrupt filesystem before and it was a major pain to recover stuff. This way if an update or a program does something wonky to the OS partition, your documents are spared.
  • jamie1130jamie1130
    Totengeist wrote:
    popeyewinter wrote:
    I think having multiple hard disk drives (or the computer thinking it does, at least) can come in handy for file organisation and structure.

    I think having your documents on a separate partition/drive from the OS is always good. I've gotten a corrupt filesystem before and it was a major pain to recover stuff. This way if an update or a program does something wonky to the OS partition, your documents are spared.
    Very true. Having important stuff separated from your operating system can be a huge blessing, especially if the OS decides to mess itself up (which they always do to me for some reason).
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