NTFS for Win98

[time]

This could be highly interesting to several people here:

Paragon Software Group, is excited to announce the release of Paragon NTFS for Win98, a unique NTFS file system driver for Windows 95/98/ME! Once installed, any NTFS drives present on your system will be fully accessible as native Windows 95/98/ME volumes.

With Paragon NTFS for Win98 users can share data in dual boot environments and facilitate system migration to Windows NT/2000/XP.

In addition, Paragon NTFS for Win98 provides all necessary functions to create, format, hide, unhide, and delete partitions. This will help you to configure and access different Windows versions on one machine.

A whole lot of people are struggling with this while, for instance, adding Windows XP to their machines. In fact, we've received messages from and read posts by people, who say they tried Windows XP, but didn't want to dismiss their well-known Windows 95/98/ME operation systems. Paragon NTFS for Win98 helps to create a second partition, to format NT File System on it and to make it accessible from Windows 95/98/ME. Easy, fast and reliable.

KEY PRODUCT FEATURES

- mount NTFS volumes on Windows 95/98/ME
- full read and write access to NTFS volumes under Windows 95/98/ME
- creates, formats, and deletes primary, logical or extented partitions
- works with NT File System for Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000/XP

One very cool product.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Who's using Win 95/98/ME since 2000/XP are out?
(watch what you'll answer... tricky question)

 

[Handruin]

I remember something like this from a few years back. I tried a demo of it that would let me read from an NTFS partition, but not write to it unless I paid for the utility.

 

[Tea]

Approximately 80% of the retail market, that's who. Currently, given the choice, about 60% of new system buyers opt for Win98SE rather than XP Home exition. Another 10% pony up the extra dollars and go for Win2000.

 

[Tea]

Excuse me, that was unclear. My 80% figure reffered to the installed base; the subsequent figure to what is selling now.

 

[P5-133XL]

I remember something like this from a few years back. I tried a demo of it that would let me read from an NTFS partition, but not write to it unless I paid for the utility.

That was a utility from Sys Internals

 

[time]

The SysInternals product is a kludge. From their website:

Rather than implement code to read and write NTFS drives, NTFS for Windows 98 uses the NTFS and NTOSKRNL system files from a Windows NT or Windows 2000 configuration. NTFS for Windows 98 wraps the Windows NT/2000 NTFS driver in a run-time environment that simulates the Windows NT environment the NTFS driver is written to use.

Before you run the NTFS for Windows 98 installation program, you must have access to a number of files (listed below) from the Windows NT/2000 installation you use to access your NTFS drives. This means that if the files are located on a NTFS drive you will have to copy them to a FAT drive accessible from Windows 98.

NTFS.SYS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\drivers\ntfs.sys
NTOSKRNL.EXE: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
AUTOCHK.EXE: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\autochk.exe
NTDLL.DLL: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\ntdll.dll
C_437.NLS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\c_437.nls
C_1252.NLS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\c_1252.nls
L_INTL.NLS: this file is located at <winnt>\system32\l_intl.nls

AFAIK, the Paragon solution is the first standalone product to offer full NTFS access under Win98, believe it or not. I'm giving them full marks for some top engineering.

 

[cas]

The SysInternals product is a kludge.

One man's kludge is another man's masterpiece.

I will admit that a proper filesystem implementation is they way to go when you have a choice. Nevertheless, for those who recognize the depth of the problem, Dr. Russinovich's solution is breathtaking.

 

[Cliptin]

I wonder if you get all of the benefits of NTFS when under 98. Specificly journaling and ACLs. Without just these, I'm not sure I would trust a setup built on such a system any more than the original.

 

[Mercutio]

ACLs are built into a different tier of the Windows NT architecture (I don't feel like reaching over to look up the exact name). Jounaling is part of the filesystem. I'd like to know how they implement user-level security given the different ways in which users interact with each system.

 

[time]

One man's kludge is another man's masterpiece.

I wondered if I shouldn't have qualified such a bald statement, but as I hoped, it seems to have encouraged people to think about it.

Yes, the kludge is exceedingly clever. And if there is no other realistic solution, it is a good idea. But I've been around too long now to stop to admire clever coding. If anything, it bothers me.

Years ago, a friend of mine was shaking his head because one of his programmers had written some 'cute' C, with the justification it took less lines of code. Whereas my friend wanted readability and maintainability.