how to make a bootable DOS hard drive?

hat · Apr 13, 2009, 07:26 AM

I just threw my old 120gb ide hard drive in my computer and I plan on setting up a 32mb partition on it for BIOS flashing. Our very own guide here only says something about "add text here on how to make a bootable DOS partition".

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...g/vidcard/34/6

alexp999 · Apr 13, 2009, 10:27 AM

The easiest way I would have thought, is to make the partition, then prepare it like a USB drive for booting (See link in my sig)

Then all you have to do, is tell the BIOS which HDD to boot from when you want to flash the BIOS

hat · Apr 13, 2009, 11:01 AM

Tried that, unfortounately it only sees usb drives. That's exactly the meathod I use to make my usb drives bootable, doesn't work on hdds.

DanTheBanjoman · Apr 13, 2009, 11:05 AM

Boot from a DOS CD/diskette/USb disk, format the 32MB partition as FAT16 and use sys.com to transfer system files to the harddrive. (sys source destination)

hat · Apr 13, 2009, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

Boot from a DOS CD/diskette/USb disk, format the 32MB partition as FAT16 and use sys.com to transfer system files to the harddrive. (sys source destination)

what commands do I need to do that then?
meh, when I go into my bios, it only recgonizes the hard drive as one whole hard drive, it doesn't see the seperate partitions. What now?

how does the computer choose which partition to boot from?

DanTheBanjoman · Apr 13, 2009, 12:09 PM

The BIOS has nothing to do with partitions. The MBR decides what partition boots. Hence you need to utilize some boot loader. Like the NT one.

hat · Apr 13, 2009, 12:24 PM

I still have no idea what you are talking about...

hat · Apr 14, 2009, 03:57 AM

DanTheBanjoman · Apr 14, 2009, 07:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hat

I still have no idea what you are talking about...

Considering the fact that you seem to know nothing about partitioning and making bootable drives I'm pretty sure it's a better idea to just make some USB stick bootable.

If you want I can make a Ghost of a clean bootable USB stick, saves quite some time.

hat · Apr 14, 2009, 07:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DanTheBanjoman

Considering the fact that you seem to know nothing about partitioning and making bootable drives I'm pretty sure it's a better idea to just make some USB stick bootable.

If you want I can make a Ghost of a clean bootable USB stick, saves quite some time.

That's the whole point of this thread, I'm trying to find out how to make my partition bootable. I have used the USB stick meathod in the past with my DFI board. That board saw it as a hard drive (c

, but this board sees it as a floppy drive (a

and nvflash doesn't work properly when the drive is seen as an a: drive so I need to make a bootable partition.

alexp999 · Apr 14, 2009, 08:46 AM

Do you want an option added to the XP bootloader? Or just be able to select the HDD to boot from in the BIOS when you want to use it?

DanTheBanjoman · Apr 14, 2009, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hat

That's the whole point of this thread, I'm trying to find out how to make my partition bootable. I have used the USB stick meathod in the past with my DFI board. That board saw it as a hard drive (c

, but this board sees it as a floppy drive (a

and nvflash doesn't work properly when the drive is seen as an a: drive so I need to make a bootable partition.

Why wouldn't nvflash work from A:? If there is some vague reason you could just make a bootable CD and access the USB stick from there? Dos 7.10 bootdisks are great.

alexp999 · Apr 14, 2009, 08:58 AM

It could be that when seen as a, it is under floppy emulation, in which case the total size of files, nvflash and the bios could exceed 1.44mb.

I still dont really know why a partition is so important, when I want to flash I just put in my USB drive, reboot, hit F8 and tell the bios to boot from my USB, job done.

DanTheBanjoman · Apr 14, 2009, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alexp999

It could be that when seen as a, it is under floppy emulation, in which case the total size of files, nvflash and the bios could exceed 1.44mb.

I still dont really know why a partition is so important, when I want to flash I just put in my USB drive, reboot, hit F8 and tell the bios to boot from my USB, job done.

Floppy emulation isn't limited to 1.44MB. Official sizes go up to at least 120MB (LS-120). I don't see why it can't be more.

hat · Apr 14, 2009, 09:08 AM

because when I ran off my usb drive (seen as a

and tried to run nvflash, it said it couldn't find c:\cwsdpmi.exe, which is a file that comes with nvflash amd could make you run into trouble if it's not there

DanTheBanjoman · Apr 14, 2009, 09:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hat

because when I ran off my usb drive (seen as a

and tried to run nvflash, it said it couldn't find c:\cwsdpmi.exe, which is a file that comes with nvflash amd could make you run into trouble if it's not there

Let me guess, you ran a batchfile? Edit the batchfile, remove pointers to specific drives. (change to \cwsdpmi.exe) Or if there is some other mystical thing pointing to C: which you can't edit, use subst.

hat · Apr 14, 2009, 10:24 AM

No, no batchfile. Just a bunch of files on a bootable usb drive.

DanTheBanjoman · Apr 14, 2009, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hat

No, no batchfile. Just a bunch of files on a bootable usb drive.

Open config.sys and autoexec.bat in notepad.

hat · Apr 15, 2009, 02:12 AM

aha, never mind. I found a neat little setting buried in the SUPER I/O options that allows me to select different types of emulation for usb sticks... and hard drive was one of them. this allows me to operate my bootable floppy as per usual just like my old DFI board. thanks anyway for your attempts to help me, I'm just not oldschool enough to understand what the hell you're talking about

Wile E · Apr 15, 2009, 04:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hat

aha, never mind. I found a neat little setting buried in the SUPER I/O options that allows me to select different types of emulation for usb sticks... and hard drive was one of them. this allows me to operate my bootable floppy as per usual just like my old DFI board. thanks anyway for your attempts to help me, I'm just not oldschool enough to understand what the hell you're talking about

lol. You may not be able to understand the old school stuff, but a bootloader is that thing that pops up when you have multiple OSes that lets you select the one to boot into. AKA: That list that lets you pick from Vista or XP, for instance. Just a fyi.

Apr 13, 2009, 07:26 AM	#1
hat Maximum Overclocker Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ohio Posts: 12,236 (5.15/day) Thanks: 2,054 Thanked 2,039 Times in 1,549 Posts System Specs	how to make a bootable DOS hard drive? I just threw my old 120gb ide hard drive in my computer and I plan on setting up a 32mb partition on it for BIOS flashing. Our very own guide here only says something about "add text here on how to make a bootable DOS partition". http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...g/vidcard/34/6 __________________ My Heatware “Inb4 smartphone LN2 overclocking.” -radrok

System Name:	Starlifter // Dragonfly
Processor:	(lapped) i7 920 4GHz 1.3v // 1090T 3.6GHz 1.3v
Motherboard:	Asus Rampage III // Gigabyte GA-770T-USB3
Cooling:	(lapped) Corsair H70 // (lapped) TT Big Typhoon
Memory:	3x2GB DDR3 1600 10-10-10-30-128-1T 1.5v // 2x2GB DDR3 1333 9-9-9-24-1T 1.5v
Video Card:	HIS Radeon 5870 // BFG Maxcore 55 GTX260
Hard Disk:	Plextor M5S 128GB + 512GB OCZ Agility 4 + 2TB WD20EARS // WDC Black 500GB
Optical Drive:	SATA DVD-RW // IDE CD-RW
CRT/LCD Model:	Dell/Alienware AW2310 + 19" HDTV // 19" HDTV
Case:	Antec SOHO 1030B // some really old white case... but it's decent
Sound Card:	Creative X-Fi Fatality Professional // onboard (disabled)
PSU:	Antec NeoHe 550W // Corsair CX600w
Software:	Windows 7 Home Premium x64 // Windows 7 Home Premium x64
Benchmarks:	zunn zunnzunn zunn zunn

Apr 13, 2009, 10:27 AM	#2
alexp999 Staff Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Dorset, UK Posts: 6,728 (3.16/day) Thanks: 684 Thanked 915 Times in 783 Posts System Specs	The easiest way I would have thought, is to make the partition, then prepare it like a USB drive for booting (See link in my sig) Then all you have to do, is tell the BIOS which HDD to boot from when you want to flash the BIOS __________________ ASUS P45 Club [FS] [WTB] Heatware ebay Elite Lounge USB Boot Guide 3DMark Vantage My Rig XBOX Gamertag Steam ID Dad's: EVGA 750i FTW, E6600, F7Pro, 4GB, 8800GTS 640MB SLi, SST 750W, Commodore EVE Gallente Case

System Name:	Gaming Rig \| Uni Laptop
Processor:	Intel Q6600 G0 (2007) @ 3.6Ghz @ 1.45625v (LLC) / 4 GHz Bench @ 1.63v \| AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-62 2 GHz
Motherboard:	ASUS P5Q Deluxe (Intel P45) \| HP 6715b
Cooling:	Xigmatek Dark Knight w/AC MX2 ~ Case Fans: 2 x 180mm + 1 x 120mm Silverstone Fans
Memory:	4GB OCZ Platinum PC2-8000 @ 1000Mhz 5-5-5-15 2.1v \| 2 x 1GB DDR2 667 MHz
Video Card:	XFX GTX 285 1GB, Modded FTW BIOS @ 725/1512/1350 w/Accelero Xtreme GTX 280 + Scythe sinks\| ATI X1250
Hard Disk:	2x WD6400AAKS 1 TB Raid 0, 140GB Raid 1 & 80GB Maxtor Basics External HDD (storage) \| 160GB 2.5"
Optical Drive:	Asus 2014L1T Sata DVD-RW \| HP GSA-T20N DVD-RW
CRT/LCD Model:	Samsung SyncMaster SM2433BW @ 1920 x 1200 via DVI-D \| 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050 resolution)
Case:	Silverstone Fortress FT01B-W ~ Logitech G15 R1 / Microsoft Laser Mouse 6000
Sound Card:	Soundmax AD2000BX Onboard Sound, via Logitech X-230 2.1 \| ADI SoundMAX HD Audio
PSU:	Corsair TX650W \| HP 90W
Software:	Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7100 x64 \| Windows 7 Ultimate Build 7100 x64
Benchmarks:	3DM06: 19519, Vantage: P16170 ~ Win7: -CPU 7.5 -MEM 7.5 -AERO 7.9 -GFX 6.0 -HDD 6.0

Apr 13, 2009, 11:01 AM	#3
hat Maximum Overclocker Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ohio Posts: 12,236 (5.15/day) Thanks: 2,054 Thanked 2,039 Times in 1,549 Posts System Specs	Tried that, unfortounately it only sees usb drives. That's exactly the meathod I use to make my usb drives bootable, doesn't work on hdds. __________________ My Heatware “Inb4 smartphone LN2 overclocking.” -radrok

Apr 13, 2009, 11:05 AM	#4
DanTheBanjoman Señor Moderator Join Date: May 2004 Location: Utrecht, Utrecht, The kingdom of the Netherlands Posts: 8,498 (2.58/day) Thanks: 41 Thanked 1,453 Times in 1,077 Posts System Specs	Boot from a DOS CD/diskette/USb disk, format the 32MB partition as FAT16 and use sys.com to transfer system files to the harddrive. (sys source destination)

Processor:	Dual Xeon 5506
Motherboard:	Asus Z8NA-D6
Cooling:	2x Thermalright HR-01 X/passive
Memory:	6GB Corsair something
Video Card:	EVGA GTX 260 Core 216
Hard Disk:	None
Optical Drive:	None
CRT/LCD Model:	24" Asus
Case:	Thermaltake Swing
Sound Card:	Onboard
PSU:	620W CM
Software:	Win2k8

Apr 13, 2009, 12:09 PM	#6
DanTheBanjoman Señor Moderator Join Date: May 2004 Location: Utrecht, Utrecht, The kingdom of the Netherlands Posts: 8,498 (2.58/day) Thanks: 41 Thanked 1,453 Times in 1,077 Posts System Specs	The BIOS has nothing to do with partitions. The MBR decides what partition boots. Hence you need to utilize some boot loader. Like the NT one.

Apr 13, 2009, 12:24 PM	#7
hat Maximum Overclocker Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ohio Posts: 12,236 (5.15/day) Thanks: 2,054 Thanked 2,039 Times in 1,549 Posts System Specs	I still have no idea what you are talking about... __________________ My Heatware “Inb4 smartphone LN2 overclocking.” -radrok

Apr 14, 2009, 03:57 AM	#8
hat Maximum Overclocker Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ohio Posts: 12,236 (5.15/day) Thanks: 2,054 Thanked 2,039 Times in 1,549 Posts System Specs	__________________ My Heatware “Inb4 smartphone LN2 overclocking.” -radrok

Apr 14, 2009, 08:46 AM	#11
alexp999 Staff Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Dorset, UK Posts: 6,728 (3.16/day) Thanks: 684 Thanked 915 Times in 783 Posts System Specs	Do you want an option added to the XP bootloader? Or just be able to select the HDD to boot from in the BIOS when you want to use it? __________________ ASUS P45 Club [FS] [WTB] Heatware ebay Elite Lounge USB Boot Guide 3DMark Vantage My Rig XBOX Gamertag Steam ID Dad's: EVGA 750i FTW, E6600, F7Pro, 4GB, 8800GTS 640MB SLi, SST 750W, Commodore EVE Gallente Case

Apr 14, 2009, 08:58 AM	#13
alexp999 Staff Join Date: Jul 2007 Location: Dorset, UK Posts: 6,728 (3.16/day) Thanks: 684 Thanked 915 Times in 783 Posts System Specs	It could be that when seen as a, it is under floppy emulation, in which case the total size of files, nvflash and the bios could exceed 1.44mb. I still dont really know why a partition is so important, when I want to flash I just put in my USB drive, reboot, hit F8 and tell the bios to boot from my USB, job done. __________________ ASUS P45 Club [FS] [WTB] Heatware ebay Elite Lounge USB Boot Guide 3DMark Vantage My Rig XBOX Gamertag Steam ID Dad's: EVGA 750i FTW, E6600, F7Pro, 4GB, 8800GTS 640MB SLi, SST 750W, Commodore EVE Gallente Case

Apr 14, 2009, 09:08 AM	#15
hat Maximum Overclocker Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ohio Posts: 12,236 (5.15/day) Thanks: 2,054 Thanked 2,039 Times in 1,549 Posts System Specs	because when I ran off my usb drive (seen as a and tried to run nvflash, it said it couldn't find c:\cwsdpmi.exe, which is a file that comes with nvflash amd could make you run into trouble if it's not there __________________ My Heatware “Inb4 smartphone LN2 overclocking.” -radrok

Apr 14, 2009, 10:24 AM	#17
hat Maximum Overclocker Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ohio Posts: 12,236 (5.15/day) Thanks: 2,054 Thanked 2,039 Times in 1,549 Posts System Specs	No, no batchfile. Just a bunch of files on a bootable usb drive. __________________ My Heatware “Inb4 smartphone LN2 overclocking.” -radrok

Apr 15, 2009, 02:12 AM	#19
hat Maximum Overclocker Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Ohio Posts: 12,236 (5.15/day) Thanks: 2,054 Thanked 2,039 Times in 1,549 Posts System Specs	aha, never mind. I found a neat little setting buried in the SUPER I/O options that allows me to select different types of emulation for usb sticks... and hard drive was one of them. this allows me to operate my bootable floppy as per usual just like my old DFI board. thanks anyway for your attempts to help me, I'm just not oldschool enough to understand what the hell you're talking about __________________ My Heatware “Inb4 smartphone LN2 overclocking.” -radrok

System Name:	The ClusterF**k
Processor:	980X @ 4212Mhz 24/7
Motherboard:	Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 BIOS F12
Cooling:	MCR-320, DDC-1 pump w/Bitspower res top (1/2" fittings), Koolance CPU-360
Memory:	3x2GB Mushkin Redlines 1600Mhz 6-8-6-24
Video Card:	Evga GTX 580
Hard Disk:	Seagate 7200.10 320GB x2 RAID0; 2 x Samsung F2 1.5TB; 1 x F1 1TB; 1 x F4 2TB
Optical Drive:	LG WH10LS30K 10X Blu-ray Burner
CRT/LCD Model:	HP LP2475w 24" 1920x1200 IPS
Case:	Technofront Bench Station
Sound Card:	Auzentech X-Fi Forte into Onkyo SR606 and Polk TSi200's + RM6750
PSU:	ENERMAX Galaxy EVO EGX1250EWT 1250W
Software:	Win7 Ultimate N x64

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads
Thread	Thread Starter	Forum	Replies	Last Post
Tutorial For Upgrading Xbox 360 From 20gb To 120gb Using WD	CAPITAL LETTERS	General Hardware	28	Jan 15, 2009 08:13 AM
Iomega Releases Home Media Hard Drive, Brings Cost-Effective Features to Your Home	btarunr	News	0	Jan 5, 2009 06:02 PM
System Builder's Guide 2006	djbbenn	Articles	37	Aug 25, 2006 02:47 AM
Seagate Releases the First-ever 750GB External Hard Drive	malware	News	6	Apr 29, 2006 06:58 AM