How to surpass 4 GB FAT32 file size limit?

[Aryko]

Alright, I've been looking over the options, and it looks like Windows 2000 is not the way to go for video editting - at least not yet (feel free to correct me).

How on earth can I get NTFS without abandoning the smooth functionality of 98se?

Playing 16-minute long chunks of DV sucks. I want one large project. I can't even use MPEG4 compression because the quality drop is too great at the smaller resolution sizes, and the playback is too sluggish at high resolutions.

Can someone recommend a solution? I have a 100 minute project I want to come out with, and right now my only choice is 16-minute long chunks.

- Aryko

[Pertti]

Why would you want a slower file system = NTFS ?

The MS definition of Professional OS, is one that can run servers, databases and office applications without giving the user too much control over the OS settings (including the "Administrator").

The requirements/settings for running databases couldn't be further from ones required for something like NLE.

You can place all your clips, one after another, on the timeline in MSP and play it out from there.

[This message has been edited by Pertti (edited 24 November 2000).]

[wkulecz]

Why would you want an unreliable system = win9x.

Once you've actually used windows 2000 you'll never go back.

When NT4 came out I decided "if it don't run on NT, I don't need it" and I was happy. Used it for almost five years at home and at work and never once had to re-install it or do any uninstall-->reinstall voodoo to fix things that mysteriously stopped working.

About two years ago I made an exception to try my hand at NLE and set up a win9x box with a G200 Marvel. Nothing but headaches and wasted time. Very little editing actually got done. I've nothing but regrets.

Now I've a Pyro, DV, amd Media Studio Pro 6.0 on windows 2000 and I'm happy again. Things ain't perfect -- for example, there appears to be a "race" where MSP can lock up if switching off the camcorder when going from firewire playback/preview to computer preview if I hit the preview play too soon. Its a bummer if I've done any significant work and forgot to save the project first, but I can kill MSP with task manager, restart it and be on my way again with out rebooting and scandisk like when w9x locks up. Anyone who's used premiere is in the habit of saving after any significant edit before doing anything else, but MSP on w2k had been so perfect until I dicovered this, that I'd unfortunately got out of the habit and was burned :-( The only windows 2000 instability I've experienced so far (on 6 sytems total, only one was pre-installed) is with ATI and Matrox video drivers!

If your current DV board doesn't support windows 2000, invest ~$90 in Pyro and setup windows 2000 dualboot, add a third hard drive formated NTFS for capture/editing and give it a try. NTFS may be "slower" on benchmarks but the only benchmarks that count are your applications and NTFS is more than fast enough for everything I do!

--wally.

[Pertti]

So Wally,

What did you do with your W9x to make it unreliable?

I'm running W95a, W95B, W98SE and W2K without reliability problems, but W2K is still too patronizing.

[DosFreak]

Oh please. Don't play innocent. You know exactly why he's using NT instead of 9x.

You can adjust the cluster size for NTFS partitions if you want. That should speed up things quite a bit. (at the expense of disk space).

[Pertti]

You can adjust the cluster sizes in FAT32 also, it can even be done in DOS promt with Format [drive]:/Z:[cluster size*2].
"Format d:/Z:64" would format your "D" drive with 32kB clusters.

Or you can use tools like the Partition Magic to do the same.

[DosFreak]

For 2gb+ partitions I think NTFS uses 4k cluster sizes. You can go all the way up to 64k using the NT Disk manager.

[wkulecz]

Actually I do practically nothing with win9x because I use NT4 and w2k. Eventually I got my G200 marvel working OK on w95 but far too many crashes, and lockups, and re-installing windows and its drivers in the process. (Having recieved intermittently defective Marvel hardware didn't help!).

I'm an "expert" at fixing broken windows systems because I've been fixing windows for a friend who owns a computer store on saturdays for the past eight years (starting with win3.0) I usually only see the problems his full time techs can't solve.

Basically its the unreliability of windows what gets me all the computer toys I have to play with. Perhaps I should be grateful.


I can pick a few windows systems that have been "reliable" -- my wife's for example, although I can crash it in about 30 seconds by doing something she never does (play an MPEG1 across the network and switch to full screen). This works on most win9x systems but not hers. This is my cleanest example of the general unreliabily of win9x. If she decided she needed this ability, I'd upgrade her to w2k, but since they have win98 at work its easiest for her to use w98 at home too. Just last week she lost a days worth of work with a tight deadline looming when win9x corruped a document that caused windows to blue screen when anyone tried to open it. This may be an MS Office bug not a windows problem directly, but no OS should crash when a data file is opened no matter how buggy the application! How we let Microsoft stuff run our offices and businesses I'll never understand!!!!

Basically when I install NT4 or W2k for someone I genarally never see the machine again. When I install w9x its a steady source of maintainance revenue from people who can't fix it themselves.


What makes w2k patronizing? WinME is what I'd call patronizing -- looking like it was designed for 8th graders.

My only real w2k complaint is MS seems to have tried to hide all the things that make "legacy" stuff usually work so you come the wrong conclusion that you need to buy new stuff if PnP doesn't find it. W2k PnP is perhaps its best feature -- for the first time I feel PnP works for me, not against me!

--wally.

[Aryko]

Pertti,

You can adjust the cluster sizes in FAT32 also, it can even be done in DOS promt with Format [drive]:/Z:[cluster size*2].
"Format d:/Z:64" would format your "D" drive with 32kB clusters.

What would my maximum file size be with this configuration?

- Aryko

[wkulecz]

Adjusting cluster sizes can do nothing to increase the maximum file size in fat32.

Mainly cluster size is a tradeoff for minimizing wasted disk space vs. "efficiency". Since file size is rarely evenly divisible by the cluster size, on average you waste 1/2 of a cluster per file. Bigger clusters mean more data can be transfered per unit of system disk overhead.

--wally.

[Pertti]

Sorry guys for being this late in getting back, but my day job sometimes takes me to places with no connection

Aryko, the maximum cluster size for W9x is 32k.

Wally, Not being able to turn off all checking, verification, backing up, caching(MS style) of whatever...etc..."features"(I could continue the list for quite awhile) makes an OS "patronizing" in my book.

I have also made my share of fixing screwed up systems, but most of the systems I have built, configured and delivered (with W9x), I never have to go back to (except for upgrades).

Once installed and configured right, W95B is pretty good OS in my book. As for W98/W98SE MicroS**t has not yet released enough updates for to bring them to the same level.

[Aryko]

Thanks for all the responses guys. I guess I will wait for Win2000 to be a bit more friendly in terms of more applications and then switch over - or find two more hard drives to run a dedicated system on it. Or dual boot. I dunno yet.

- Aryko