Boot Disk for External Hard drive

[ed]

Hi:
I have a toshiba notebook computer( about 2 years old)
I have a pcmcia card install that have two
usb2 outputs. (the card bus is 32-bits)
One of the output I have go to a usb2 enclosure
with a hard drive in it.

My OS is Winxp.
I am using this external hard drive for my backup files.
In Winxp everything work fine.

What I need is a dos boot disk that can access the external
hard drive. Any ideas how I can find one?
Try doing a search on googles but no luck.
There is nothing in the cmoss about the PCMCIA card or external Hard Drive.

Any help would be appreciated
Thank you:
Ed

 

[GTS]

This is probably not possible. The boot disk would have to load drivers for
the PCMCIA bus and the USB card. I've never seen PCMCIA drivers that could
be used that way. If the laptop has BIOS support for USB (some newer ones
do) and you also have a built in USB port (even if USB 1) that would be a
possibility.

The one other possibility that comes to mind is a Knoppix bootable CD.
http://www.knoppix.net/ (This is a version of Linux that can boot and
load from a CD, handy sometimes for drive access to damaged XP
installations. Whether it would work for you is iffy but maybe...)

 

[ed]

Hi:
Thank for the information. I am
going to give it a try.
Ed
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

What you need to do is to search Google for "Duse" which will give you USB
Dos drivers. Then create a "standard" dos boot disk and load the drivers
into config.sys and autoexec.bat in the same way as you would load CDR
drivers. You will now be able to access the external USB drive from DOS, at
least I can .

 

[ed]

Hi:
If the USB ports was on the computer what you said is true.
But mine is going thru a pcmcia card this is where the
problem is.
Thanks for the reply:
Ed
------------------------------------------------------

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

It appears that my system is virtually identical to yours (Toshiba laptop, 2
yrs old etc.). While I don't use a pc-card to access my external drive, I
don't see what difference that would make. Not to get "bogged" down on that
point, surely your machine has USB ports and you aren't forced to use a
pcmcia card? My Satellite has three USB ports plus firewire.

As a word of explanation my external enclosure is USB/Firewire. Whereas I
have a USB pc-card for USB 2, I use firewire for the external HDD but I do
know I can access it from DOS via the USB ports although I do admit I
haven't tried it in DOS using the pc-card.