Curious about bootdisk and Fat32 hard drive

[Magnum]

I have a second NTFS drive(120 Gb) that I only use for program backup and disk images.

Because of an inquiring mind...

If I converted it to Fat32, could I write to it using the utiilities on a Super MS DOS 7.1 Bootdisk?
It's basically an O.S. on a diskette.

I thought NTFS4Dos would help, but could not find much use for it.

I don't think my 10 year BIOS supports booting from a USB drive.

[Gunther]

Hi Andy,

If I converted it to Fat32, could I write to it using the utiilities on a Super MS DOS 7.1 Bootdisk?
It's basically an O.S. on a diskette.

That could work. But you must be aware: DOS needs a primary partition and drive C. There are workarounds for that, but probably only with FreeDOS.

The DOS underneat Windows ME can handle FAT32 partitions properly. There are several disk images around the net. The following links may be interesting for you:
http://masterbootrecord.de/docs/bootdisketten.php Unfortunately in German, but you could read what you're searching for. http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm
and http://bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm Hope that helps.

Gunther

[Magnum]

Thanks for the info and links.

I could not find anything that addressed having DOS on a second drive and booting up to it.

I will put FreeDos on a re-writable CD and see what it can do.

[redskull]

BartPE is a better option, IMO.  A little more work, but it's save my life on several occasions.  But in answer to your questions, the bootdisk should have no trouble (just be careful not to accidently destroy your NTFS partition; it won't be able to read it, but have no problem rendering it useless if you are careless)

-r

[Gunther]

Andy,

I could not find anything that addressed having DOS on a second drive and booting up to it.

Is it another drive or another disk? Another disk means, you've to set some jumpers and to screw at the hardware. Another drive at the same disk seems not so complicated. You could use the OS/2 boot manager; but it needs a separate primary partition. You could also use GRUB. I used the OS/2 boot manager over years without any problem. Now I use GRUB, which works also very well. It resides inside the master boot record and needs a bit room on your disk for the other stages. There's also a bunch of other free boot managers around the net.

Gunther

[Magnum]

Gunther,

I hope this makes sense.

I have 2 drives.

I am interested in booting to the second drive or put another OS on it and have the option of booting to WinXP
on C:(NTFS) OR use a second O.S. on the 2nd drive. (Drive D:)

I don't want to have to physically switch out the jumper pins on the 2nd drive. (It's currently a NTFS)

Andy

[Gunther]

Andy,

I hope this makes sense.

I hope, too. I'll try to make it clear. At a physical hard disk you can have only 4 primary partitions which leads to 4 different drive letters, for example: C, D, E, and F. But you can have a lot more logical drives into an extended partition. We're speaking about the same disk here.

Let me give you an example. On my old desktop computer, I've installed PCDOS 7, Win 98 SE, OS/2 Warp 4,  Linux, and FreeBSD. So, what have I done. First I did the partition step at the only available hard drive. I made 3 primary partitions: one for DOS (PCDOS won't work without primary C), one for Win98 (it's the same like DOS), and one for the OS/2 Boot Manager (needs also a primary partition). The rest of the disk is my extended partition, which contains the logical drives for OS/2, Linux, and BSD (all with the appropriate size). These operating system are installable at logical drives. You may, for example, Linux install at drive Z, if you wish and it will work.

Next step: I installed DOS at the first primary partition with drive letter C; that's no big deal. After that I installed OS/2 at a logical drive and the OS/2 Boot Manager inside a small primary partition (8 MB); it doesn't need any drive letter. The Boot Manager switches either the one or the other primary partition active; that's it's job. After that, I could install Win98 also at a primary partition, drive letter C. At the end I installed Linux and BSD at the appropriate logical drives. That's all.

That's all a big tricky, but you should have a good plan, by doing such jobs.

The entire situation isn't clear for me. Do you have 1 or 2 physical disks? If you have 1 physical disk, see above. If you have 2 different physical disks, then it's very tricky. You should first know: is it a primary partition or a logical drive inside a extended partition? That's very important. Please check that out first and let me think about that.

Gunther

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   I don't know about FreeDOS but MS-DOS is required
to be installed on the C: drive.  At least the initial boot
code.  That was through Win98.  Check your BIOS for
a swap disk option or boot from drive D: option.

Regards,

Steve N.

[Gunther]

Andy,

what about that way? Your BIOS doesn't allow booting via USB drive. Okay. But it'll boot via CD. Why not produce your personal DOS Life CD? You'll find the tool for creating such a CD here: http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/. So, you need also such a cool tool like the Unix dd (disk dump), which will copy sector by sector (including the boot record). A free dd windows port is here: http://www.chrysocome.net/dd.

Insert a floppy in your floppy drive and type at the command line: format a: /S If you don't have a physical floppy drive, you can use the free "virtual floppy driver" from here: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vfd.html.

With this tools, you can burn your image on CD and start whatever DOS you wish, without changing your current configuration. You know, DOS can't read NTFS. But there are drivers around the net for reading NTFS drives under plain DOS, which must simply included via config.sys.

Gunther

[Magnum]

I have a floppy.

The problem is that you cannot read/write to a second drive from either a boot floppy or CD.

The closest I found was some drivers that let you see what is on your hard disks and do some repair or defrag drives.

I did learn something new last night.

On another computer with only one hard drive.

I made a second partition and was able to use it to store backup disk images that Macrium Reflect program makes.

[Gunther]

Andy,

The problem is that you cannot read/write to a second drive from either a boot floppy or CD.

I would not write from DOS on a NTFS drive. That's dangerous. Reading is okay.

Is your NTFS file system okay at the second drive? If yes, it should be possible to read the drive from DOS with an appropriate driver. There are also DOS drivers for reading HPFS (OS/2 file system). NTFS is nothing else as a modified HPFS.

If not, you can download the Ubuntu Life CD, for example, from here: http://ftp-stud.hs-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/releases.ubuntu.com/10.04/ubuntu-10.04.1-desktop-i386.iso. Burn the ISO image at CD and start it. Mount and unmount is graphics menu driven and very easy. You should see your NTFS drives.

Gunther

[Magnum]

This stuff is really complicated. :-)

I found Zboot manager.

One requirement that I have is that I be able to store my disk images on my second hard drive.

I haven't read anything that says that Macrium Disk Imaging can store the files on a drive that has a different O.S.

When I read that Zboot and others have the option to make copies of the MBR, I start getting nervous.  :(

[Gunther]

Andy,

This stuff is really complicated.

Yes it is.

When I read that Zboot and others have the option to make copies of the MBR, I start getting nervous.

That's a good sign. So you have a copy of your old MBR and if all things get wrong, you can copy it back and your system is healthy. But in general, be carefully by experimenting with such things. Make backups, get the actual drivers for your hardware (graphics adaptor, network card ...), and be aware that you have to install the OS new in the worst case scenario (I hope not).

Gunther

[dedndave]

this is a little off the beaten path, but wanted to share some info...

i have a sony machine - the BIOS wants only to boot off the first partition after the recovery partition
switching active partitions doesn't do what it normally should do   :(
but, i found that i am able to hide the first partition by changing the ID type byte to some unrecognized value
then - it will boot from the next partition

[Magnum]

this is a little off the beaten path, but wanted to share some info...

i have a sony machine - the BIOS wants only to boot off the first partition after the recovery partition
switching active partitions doesn't do what it normally should do   :(
but, i found that i am able to hide the first partition by changing the ID type byte to some unrecognized value
then - it will boot from the next partition

I don't understand. What do you mean by "first partition after the recovery partition."

I have never heard of a "recovery partition."

Andy