Dear Jordan
Thank link may be useful. I have used Virtual Floppy Drive in the past
but it does not seem to work with 64 bit windows, or at least I have not
been able to get it to work.
Regarding the boot disc, you need a real floppy disc drive and a real
floppy disc. I have used a usb floppy drive and that was fine. To key
to the trick is that you are overwriting the master boot record of the
system drive and this is protected if you boot from it. However if you
boot from a floppy you can carry out this operation. If you are running
a virtual pc with XP then you can simply boot from the image, but if you
want to rebuild a real system you need the real hardware. I used to do
this regularly when I ran a system based on XP.
Paul
On 09/02/2020 17:06, J R FOX wrote:
Hi Paul,
I still have an external (USB powered) floppy drive. Since we're all
about the by now fairly obscure here
on this List, for reference sake I will mention a diskette
imaging program that I used successfully, back in the
day, from a French software developer.
ARDI | VETUSWARE.COM - the biggest free abandonware collection in the
universe <https://vetusware.com/manufacturer/ARDI/?author=1176>
ARDI | VETUSWARE.COM - the biggest free abandonware collection in
the un...
VETUSWARE.COM - the biggest free abandonware collection in the universe
<https://vetusware.com/manufacturer/ARDI/?author=1176>
That's what I could still find for the older, legacy version. It moved
on to a later-Windows version
Diskette and flash drive tools par Daniel F Valot
<http://dvalot.free.fr/emtcopy.html>
Diskette and flash drive tools par Daniel F Valot
emtcopy ardi4usb cleandisk PC / Windows par Daniel F Valot
<http://dvalot.free.fr/emtcopy.html>
Does the boot disk you mentioned actually need to be
run from DOS ? What about with a DOS emulator ? Otherwise, one could
probably mount and run a
diskette image using something like Daemon Tools,
or the portable one I have liked, ISO Toolkit, in order
to avoid needing a floppy drive.
Jordan
On Saturday, February 8, 2020, 10:11:12 AM PST, Paul Breeze
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear Jordan
It is a 3.5 inch DOS floppy boot disc (image) so it is no size atall.
That is what you need for this trick. You have to be able to boot into
DOS from the floppy disc and then use the dos utility. I have always
used a Win98 floppy boot disk but it will probably work with earlier
versions of DOS if you have one that you can boot with. If you would
like a copy of the one I have, I can send it to you privately.
Paul
On 08/02/2020 17:17, J R FOX wrote:
Hi Paul,
Perhaps you could "ISO" image it (and preferably include an MD5 or CRC32
checksum for that), compress that into
an archive with Zip, 7Zip, or Rar if the ISO happens to be
fairly sizable, and send that to me ? A good, free program
for making ISO images is the disc-burning program ImgBurn.
If you don't have this, I could send you the final version of it.
The basics of it are pretty simple. I've made images like
this of other discs / boot discs for others on several occasions.
Most email accounts have size limitations in the low megabyte
range for attachments. For files or archives up to 2 GB. in size,
I've been using the WeTransfer service (their free one), which I
believe Ed Mendelsohn had directed me to.
No need to mess with floppies . . . unless this item only
exists as a floppy ?
Alternately, I can look around online for this, if the above
turns out to be too much trouble.
Jordan
On Saturday, February 8, 2020, 2:24:46 AM PST, Paul Breeze
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Dear Jordan
I do not have any experience with RAID but I do know that it is usually
set up in the bios so you should be ok there. I can send you a Windows
98 boot disc image (3.5 inch) if you need one. I have never tried to
write one back to a real floppy disc but I suppose it must be possible.
On 08/02/2020 01:37, J R FOX wrote:
Paul,
There is an additional wrinkle that I forgot to mention:
The old XP computer was set up (not by me) for mirrored
RAID, to a 2nd. HDD for backup. However, I believe that
this setup is accomplished somewhere in BIOS settings,
and may not compromise anything on the boot drive
proper. (?) At least, that is what I'm hoping, as it would
be more easily bypassed.
Jordan
On Friday, February 7, 2020, 5:47:40 AM PST, Paul Breeze
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
PS. There is an old trick, that your probably already know, for when
Windows XP will not boot after copying to a new drive or restoring. Boot
from a Windows 98 boot disk and then command FDISK /MBR. This
overwrites the master boot record, forcing XP to recreate it. In case
you should be interested I also have a copy of AVIRA's NTFSDOS which
allows you access to a hard drive formatted with NTFS from DOS.