PS>> we have just bought a new system, running Win98SE.

 PS>> In the win95 system we had two 6.5gig hard drives which we have
 PS>> now installed into the new Win98 system.

 PS>> The problem now is that my OS/2 system reports that there is no
 PS>> free space on these two drives (each drive is a single fat32
 PS>> partition)

 HR> FAT32 isn't FAT16. So you have either format the drive with FAT16 or
 HR> install one of the FAT32 OS/2 drivers. Or you have to networking to
 HR> become acces from another computer to that drive.

I was confused by his message at first, too.  I wondered how OS/2 could even
access a disc drive that was in a *physically separate machine*.

Then I read the subject line.  (-:

He is already using a LAN.  His problem would seem to be that when accessed
across the LAN, OS/2 sees plenty of free space on the drives shared by the
DOS-Windows 95 system, but no free space at all on the drives shared by the
new DOS-Windows 98 system.  It's a pity that he didn't express it more
clearly.

DOS-Windows is well know for being buggy and simply not being able to cut it
as a file server.  It doesn't report things correctly.  For example, whilst
other operating systems will see long filenames just fine on volumes shared by 
Windows NT, on volumes shared by DOS-Windows 9x they will only see the short
8.3 filenames, because of a problem in how DOS-Windows 9x implements SMB.  And 
it is what the fileserver tells the other systems that is important.  It is
the fileserver that controls what information is visible.  Given that
DOS-Windows 9x doesn't report long filenames in a way that other operating
systems can understand, since it has implemented the SMB protocol badly, I
wouldn't be surprised that it doesn't report the free space on FAT32 volumes
in a way that other operating systems couldn't understand, either.  Hence the
reason that OS/2 Warp would be seeing no free space.  It is seeing whatever
the fileserver tells it, and the fileserver, DOS-Windows 98, would simply not
be telling it the truth.

My somewhat callous recommendation, therefore, would be to stop using the
DOS-Windows 9x machines as file servers, and use some other operating system
for the file server.  Make the DOS-Windows 9x machines clients, instead.

Of course, the first thing to check before doing so would be that what he has
described to us is what is actually happening.  He should use a native OS/2
tool (such as the FREE command in 4OS2 or Take Command for OS/2, or the
[Details] page of the properties notebook for the drive on the WPS desktop) to 
measure free space and confirm that OS/2 *really is* being told that there are 
zero bytes free by the DOS-Windows 98 fileserver.  DOS tools are almost
invariably broken (the well-known 32-bit integer 2GiB problem) when it comes
to measuring free space, and shouldn't be relied upon.  OS/2 tools are not
perfect, but the two mentioned above, at least, are far better.  The problem
could well be that he is using some old broken DOS tool to measure free space, 
which is falling over or reporting zero because the numbers are too large.  In 
which case he need not change fileservers, and should simply throw away the
DOS tool and use a decent native OS/2 tool on OS/2, instead.

Since he claims that the drive sizes haven't changed, that he has simply moved 
the hard disc units from one machine to another, I suspect that it really is
the case that DOS-Windows 98 is simply not telling the truth here, and that he 
really will have to change to using a different operating system for his
fileserver.

 ¯ JdeBP ®

--- FleetStreet 1.22 NR
143/1