Re: OT: DOS booting

[J R FOX jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

> >Writing to
> >C: may be complicated by the fact of C: being
> FAT-32,
> >or -- more iffy -- NTFS.

--- Harry Binswanger  wrote:

> Oh, I see, normal DOS doesn't deal with these. I
> have NTFS on C:.

This could be a problem. As Robert has pointed out
before, the *free* SysInternals NTFS driver is Read
Only. They get big bucks for the version that also
provides write capability. (I wouldn't rule out the
possibility that someone, somewhere has created a free
driver that writes to NTFS. Almost every week, I hear
of some software item I never knew existed.)

> >I drop the partition images I've made with
> >it to one, in just this manner.

> What do you mean "drop to one"?

I will have booted the DFSEE floppy or CD, which can
have some advantages over running the program from the
hard drive, make a partition image with it, and then
store the image (at least temporarily) on my last
partition, which happens to be a large FAT-32 storage
partition. From there it can later be moved to
external storage. DFSEE can see and deal with every
partition on the HDD, for a considerable range of
procedures, pretty much regardless of the OS or file
system it contains. But I don't think that it can
store files on NTFS yet -- say, if that last storage
partition happened to be NTFS. OTOH, new features are
added to the program regularly, such as the sector
editor that was added a few months ago.

> >failing that ISOBUSTER.

> Interesting that such things exist.

Necessary, for a number of particular situations.
I've also heard it mentioned that it is one of the
better tools for salvaging material from a damaged or
defective CD / DVD.

> Thanks I just dl-ed it. Now onto burning and trying.

Even if you don't make partition images, or clone
whole hard drives, it should be possible just to
extract and adapt the FreeDOS portion of that CD. I
wouldn't kid you that it will be easy, though. The
ins & outs of bootable CDs is not something I have
delved into much. Do be careful though, if you get to
experimenting with DFSEE. It is a powerful tool, and
it is possible to screw up a hard drive royally with
it, if one has not learned how to use it properly . .
. and sometimes even if one has. For this reason, I
like to confine my experimenting to *clones* of a
production drive. This greatly limits the downside.


Jordan