Windows 98, like OSR2, supports the 32-bit file system, FAT32. Unlike OSR2, Windows 98 has the ability to upgrade existing drives from the 16-bit file system to the 32-bit file system on the fly without having to re-format. Third party applications, like Partition Magic 3 have offered this before. All you do is start the Converter, choose the drive or partition you want to convert and then start it going. The access to Drive Converter this way is through a wizard which checks which drives you want to convert, and whether you have any old disk tools or anti-virus software that wouldn't work with FAT32 before converting.

If you want to see exactly how much space would be retrieved by converting from FAT16 to FAT32 there is a utility on this SuperCD called FAT32 Conversion Information utility. It simply reads the drive - you can choose which one you want to cheak - and calculates what amount of extra storage space would be available with the 4K clusters. To run it, click on the icon on the right.

If you are going to do this, then it is best you set aside enough time when you don't need your PC, so it can also defragment your drive afterwards. When a drive has been converted there will be a lot more space - hundreds of Mbs extra even - but this will be space supplied by extra clusters nestling between small files that was previously unusable. You would therefore end up with an extremely fragmented drive. The best way to do this is to use the Welcome to Windows 98 interface as it can do everything automatically, so you can leave your PC for a few hours or overnight and come back to a whole new system. See also FAT32