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From: dlm@druhi.ATT.COM (Dan Moore)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: Re: Hard Disk limitations
Message-ID: <3713@druhi.ATT.COM>
Date: 7 Nov 88 16:20:27 GMT
References: <76253@sun.uucp>
Organization: AT&T, Denver, CO
Lines: 29

in article <76253@sun.uucp>, cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) says:
> In article Friesen%PCO@BCO-MULTICS.HBI.HONEYWELL.COM writes:
>>Someone recently mentioned a 300MB hard disk was available for the ST,
>>but I was told that an ST could only access 195MB on a hard disk.
> 
> Well not really. The original 68K GEM inherited the 32Mb hard disk partition
> limit from MS-DOS, there was also a sixteen partition limit once but I 
> believe that it is now 26 (A-Z). So leaving A,B,C for the floppies and 
> the cartridge a simple 32 * 23 calculation yields 736Mb, if it is 16
> then you would only get 416Mb. Both numbers being larger than the 195
> you mention.

	GemDos is still limited to 16 Meg partitions.  Several of
the hard disk systems do allow you to create partitions larger than
16 Meg as long as the partition is *NOT* used for GemDos (ie. Spectre,
Minix, OS9, etc.).  Atari has not said anything about increasing the
16 Meg limit in the newer TOS releases.

	GemDos is also limited to 16 drives, A to P.  (NOTE: The
original doc said there was a 32 drive limit.)  Drives A and B
are used for floppies, leaving 14 drives for hard disk partitions. 
Atari's hard disk software only supports 4 partitions per physical 
drive giving a 48 Meg limit.  Supra, ICD and BMS all allow up to 14
partitions per drive, giving a 224 Meg limit.


				Dan Moore
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Denver
				dlm@druhi.ATT.COM