I appreciate all the answers, and I think you answered the one I most
neeeded, but I'm slow, so please let me be sure.

I don't need to use the whole hard drive.   I have a 75gig UltraADA
drive in there now, but I can only see 48gig, and that's fine because
this is far more than I can use.  But that drive's instructions didn't
say it wouldn't run with win98SE. It didn't mention any operating
system at all.)

Can I still do that?  Can I buy a new EIDE drive, such as from Western
Digital, that says I need win2000 SP3, or winXP, and just use it for
48gig or less now, with win98SE??

If I later move it to a newer OS, it will probably have the whole
drive visible, but certainly the part I used will be??

I would not make the partition, or the sum of all the partitions more
than 48gig, or less if 48 was a problem.

If you are inclined to email me
for some reason, remove NOPSAM  :-)

That is a nice question, and the answer is no.

But there can be a reason because of your motherboard. There are serveral
limits which are BIOS related.
Sometimes it causes the BIOS to truncate the size of the disk,
sometimes it shows the right size, but when addressed beyond the limit, it
will swap around and restart on address 0,
sometimes it just won't recognize the disk, or fail to POST.

The last is the only real reason to look for a smaller drive. The second is
to be worked around *if* you know the limit. Just be careful when
partitioning the disk not to go beyond the limit. The first one is no
problem at all.
In all cases a BIOS update might help.

Win98SE doesn't support LBA48 addressing, which means that (without 3th
party drivers) you shouldn't try to access the disk beyond the 128 GiB
limit (which is ~137 GB). It would swap around. So be careful with
partitioning. Futher there is a limit in scandisk and defrag, why you
shouldn't use partitions bigger than 124 GiB (~133 GB).

There are patches available for both W98 problems. For the LBA48 issue:
<http://www.msfn.org/board/Enable48BitLBA_Break_137Gb_barrier_t78592.html>
For scandisk and defrag you could use the ME version.

More info on limits:
<http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm>

a very inelegant solution may be available from the drive manufacturer
Drive Overlay programs allow the bios restrictions to be bypassed, but the
disk is often not readable without the overlay installed

To use a large Hard Drive to it's full capacity in W98, the following
minimum requirements must be met:

Motherboard and Chipset must be suitable.
Bios must be able to handle the drive in question. Must be able to use
LBA-48bit (Logical Block Addressing)

Fdisk.exe   - should be an updated version (but might not be necessary,
depending on if and how the limitations - if any -are overcome)
Scandisk    -  needs updated version from the standard W98/se version.
Defrag        -  needs updated version from the standard W98/se version.

For instance, with an Intel Chipset (and only Intel Chipsets), you can try
this tool to see if Chipset and Mobo are suitable. However, you should
*first look in Windows* and see what basic Chipset you have:
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/sb/CS-021273.htm

For Windows 98, Windows 98 SE:
<paste>

Click the Start button » click Settings » click Control Panel » double-click
the System applet » select the Device Manager tab » expand the System
devices listing.

After Device Manager is launched, see if the device name of the chipset is
listed. The device name may appear in a string similar to the following:
"Intel® 955X Processor to I/O Controller - 2774" In this example, the
chipset is an Intel® 955X Express Chipset.
</paste>

If it is an Intel Chipset, then:
Identify your Intel® Chipset by using Intel® Chipset Identification Utility.
The Intel Chipset Identification Utility provides an easy way to identify
the specific Intel chipset that is located on your motherboard.
http://support.intel.com/support/chipsets/inf/sb/CS-009266.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To check if the BIOS is Large Hard-Drive / 48-LBA capable, one can use this

(re-iteration of the final note below:  a large hard drive - the one in
question, or a borrowed one which is large enough - must be present and
"connected" to employ this utility.)

Intel® Application Accelerator
48-bit LBA Test Program for Windows* Me/98 SE/98
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/iaa/sb/cs-009302.htm

The MS-DOS*-based 48-bit LBA test program can be used on systems running
Windows* Millennium Edition (Me), Windows* 98 SE, or Windows* 98 to
determine if the BIOS is capable of supporting hard drives larger than 137GB
(48-bit LBA). The program will provide one of the following results:

PASSED - BIOS is currently 48-bit LBA capable. No additional steps required.
FAILED - BIOS is currently not 48-bit LBA capable. BIOS update needed.
UNDETERMINED - Test program is not able to determine if BIOS is 48-bit LBA
capable.

The 48-bit LBA test program was designed to run in a true MS-DOS
environment - not an MS-DOS prompt window. (Instructions for running the
program in true MS-DOS can be found at the bottom of this page). Running
this test program from an MS-DOS prompt from within Windows Me, Windows 98
SE or Windows 98 may work but you may see some irregularities and formatting
issues.

*Note*: Due to the current BIOS architecture, you will need to have a hard
drive larger than 137GB installed on your system before running this test
program. Otherwise, the following error message will appear: "We cannot
determine whether your BIOS is 48-bit LBA capable, because you currently do
not have a 48-bit LBA hard drive installed."

Caution: Running this test program on systems using non-supported operating
systems such as Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT* 4.0 will produce a
'NTVDM.EXE' error.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then... if the basic hardware is up to snuff and meets the above
requirements, you'll probably need a 3rd-party tool/utility to
access/format/and partition the large Hard-Drive of choice. Depending on the
mfg of the hard-drive, you might be best off using *their* 'proprietary
utility' to accomplish that.
i.e - Western Digital would use the Data Lifeguard Tool 11.2, for example.
(I have successfully used the DOS Floppy version myself)
Seagate would have it's own tool. Maxxtor would have its own. Perhaps
Hitachi has it's own as well.

There are other 3rd-party Software utilities which might also be able to
accomplish this.

HTH
Roxana

As other replies have mentioned, you probably have a BIOS limitation, not a
win98 limitation, and certainly not a FAT32 limitation.

If this is a desktop PC, a potentially cheap solution is to get a PCI-to-ATA
adapter card, install it, then attach the new hard drive to that card
instead of to the motherboard.  I did this some years ago to a 1998 vintage
Gateway (Pentium II, 450 MHz) to allow it to "see" larger disks.  As a bonus
I found that disk operations were faster, since I was replacing an ATA/33
hard drive and ATA/33 disk controller (on motherboard) with ATA/100 hard
derive and ATA/100 controller (on the add-in card).

Any modern PCI controller card will have its own BIOS that supports very
large hard drives.

I suggest that you avoid trying "overlay" software from the hard drive
maker, since that is usually specific to one class of operating systems.
For example, what works for 98 may not work for XP.  If instead, you stick
to native software (e.g., DOS, win98) then the hard drive will be readable
in most PCs.  For example, when your current PC finally dies, if the hard
drive is still OK, it could be placed in a USB 2.0 enclosure and read by a
PC running XP or Vista or LINUX or even by a MAC.