# how to make a bootable DOS hard drive?



## hat (Apr 13, 2009)

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//overclocking/vidcard/34/6


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## alexp999 (Apr 13, 2009)

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


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## hat (Apr 13, 2009)

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.


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 13, 2009)

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)


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## hat (Apr 13, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> 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?


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 13, 2009)

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.


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## hat (Apr 13, 2009)

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


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## hat (Apr 14, 2009)




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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 14, 2009)

hat said:


> 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.


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## hat (Apr 14, 2009)

DanTheBanjoman said:


> 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.


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## alexp999 (Apr 14, 2009)

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?


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 14, 2009)

hat said:


> 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.


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## alexp999 (Apr 14, 2009)

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.


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 14, 2009)

alexp999 said:


> 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.


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## hat (Apr 14, 2009)

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


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 14, 2009)

hat said:


> 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.


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## hat (Apr 14, 2009)

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


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## Deleted member 3 (Apr 14, 2009)

hat said:


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



Open config.sys and autoexec.bat in notepad.


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## hat (Apr 15, 2009)

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


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## Wile E (Apr 15, 2009)

hat said:


> 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.


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