external USB-hdd bootable

[Guest]

I have an external USB disk which I want to make bootable. First, please NOTE
that, YES, my motherboard does support booting from USB devices, also my usb
hdd shows up in the "boot order" table if connected at power on, and I can
select it if wanted, but it wont boooot. Ahh, one more thing, partition 1
(FAT32) is also made active.

Problem is. How can I make first partition a "system partition" while
formatting??? Both win2k and WinXp lack this feature, Format command does no
longer support the /S option (or it is hidden using another tag), and the sys
cmd is not provided any longer either.

When using winHex to read usb hdd (physical access) I see that there is a
MBR recorded with some boot code and the VBR for partition1 does also contain
some code (however, i do not have the scills needed to decode it). I have
tried to copy neccessary MSDOS files to root with no success, (yes I have
legal MSDOS license from older installation available). Most possible this
behaviour is caused by the fact that the VBR is not set correctly according
to these OS.

From winhex I can see that one of the strings used if boot fails says that
Ntldr is missing, which I thinks indicates that VBR expect a win2k/winxp OS.

Thus, I beleive the problem is that the partition is not formatted correctly
to be able to use a msdos operative system and thus it wont boot. For now i
think that the mbr is correct. If anyone can help with advices or tools to
format partition with system files correctly (ie. fix VBR to ask for MSDOS),
I would be very happy.

I have some PC programs on this HDD (will have, atleast, if succed) which I
need to run in MSdos enviroment, and also, It needs to be portable so
therefor an external usb disk. ... Sigh... youst a thought that entered my
mind right here and now. Could I possible install MSDOS, using the original
installation disks, onto an external usb hdd? Or will installation not find
the disk or not install correctly to any other disks than disk 0 in system.
(My external disk is marked as Disk 1). Will try this tomorrow when I have
the chance, however, if you know anything, please comment.

Thanks in advance

 

[Gordon]

I have an external USB disk which I want to make bootable. First, please NOTE
that, YES, my motherboard does support booting from USB devices, also my usb
hdd shows up in the "boot order" table if connected at power on, and I can
select it if wanted, but it wont boooot. Ahh, one more thing, partition 1
(FAT32) is also made active.

Problem is. How can I make first partition a "system partition" while
formatting??? Both win2k and WinXp lack this feature, Format command does no
longer support the /S option (or it is hidden using another tag), and the sys
cmd is not provided any longer either.

When using winHex to read usb hdd (physical access) I see that there is a
MBR recorded with some boot code and the VBR for partition1 does also contain
some code (however, i do not have the scills needed to decode it). I have
tried to copy neccessary MSDOS files to root with no success, (yes I have
legal MSDOS license from older installation available). Most possible this
behaviour is caused by the fact that the VBR is not set correctly according
to these OS.

From winhex I can see that one of the strings used if boot fails says that
Ntldr is missing, which I thinks indicates that VBR expect a win2k/winxp OS.

Thus, I beleive the problem is that the partition is not formatted correctly
to be able to use a msdos operative system and thus it wont boot. For now i
think that the mbr is correct. If anyone can help with advices or tools to
format partition with system files correctly (ie. fix VBR to ask for MSDOS),
I would be very happy.

I have some PC programs on this HDD (will have, atleast, if succed) which I
need to run in MSdos enviroment, and also, It needs to be portable so
therefor an external usb disk. ... Sigh... youst a thought that entered my
mind right here and now. Could I possible install MSDOS, using the original
installation disks, onto an external usb hdd? Or will installation not find
the disk or not install correctly to any other disks than disk 0 in system.
(My external disk is marked as Disk 1). Will try this tomorrow when I have
the chance, however, if you know anything, please comment.

Thanks in advance

have a look here:
http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

 

[Uwe Sieber]

I have an external USB disk which I want to make bootable. First, please NOTE
that, YES, my motherboard does support booting from USB devices, also my usb
hdd shows up in the "boot order" table if connected at power on, and I can
select it if wanted, but it wont boooot. Ahh, one more thing, partition 1
(FAT32) is also made active.

Just boot DOS from a floppy or a from a CD-ROM. Your USB drive
should be availlable then. Check out which drive letter it got
and then you can put a DOS system on it by the good old
SYS X:
command.

There are reports that DOS reqires drives for USB drives. All my
computers of the last four years made USB drives availlable under
pure DOS without any drives. Just in case:
http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC/DOS/Drivers/USB/


Uwe

 

[Guest]

Wooha! Great info, Ill try that tomorrow. Youst like christmass you know.

However, aboute USB driver for DOS. I guess this is something the
motherboad/BIOS handles when it comes to accessing the harddrives and dos do
not even know it is installed on a USB_HDD, the communication goes beween the
Drive and motehrboadr much like it would between an IDE device, DOS and the
board... When it comes to detecting other USB devices which is connected when
running in DOS mode, I guess you would need a driver because otherwise there
aint any sub systems listening to the USB handler on the motherboard. I.e.
and usb key connected while running DOS wont show up with an assigned drive
letter. However, this is not my goal so Thanks for your tips both of you