Good question Len (on why Maxtor's 11.5 gig "requires" win 95. The answer, as Sean suggests in his follow-up, has to do with the 8.4 gig EIDE limit. Any > 8 gig IDE drive will thus be subject to these problems. There's both a bios and an OS issue here.
-Bioses made before early this year can't "see" drive partitions beyond this limit without special enabling software (in Maxtor's case, "Maxblast," other vendors have their own solutions.) Some report this has worked well, but I would be wary messing with it--one more level of complexity.
-DOS, AFAIK, normally cannot see beyond the 8.4 limit. I do know that partition magic, running under dos, sees it OK.
-win95 can see beyond it.
-NT can, provided one uses the fix described in my earlier post
Message 4695015 . (Maxtor's web site contradicts this, saying NT can't use it, which would be true absent the fix.)
For a more technical discussion of why, involving int13 extensions and other matters, consult any of the major hard drive vendors' web sites.
Bottom line: if I had doubts about my bios and didn't need a bigger drive, I would opt for an EIDE drive under 8 gigs. But if the bios is good, and the fix is applied, the > 8 gig drives should be fine under NT.
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