Each file uses one inode. Unless you're creating boatloads of tiny files, it's not an issue. Drive size is of no relevance... you can run a small drive out of inodes too, but it's not likely to happen without trying very hard.

The issue of having large drives will be a problem if you try to use a single drive >128GB (or 137G in marketing speak). To get around that, you'd need a new IDE controller.