Re: [mtools] Making bootable USB flash drive

[David C Niemi]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Eugene Kotlyarov wrote:
> David C Niemi wrote:
> > Making a drive bootable takes more than just a low-level format and a file
> > system, you also need the system files that will actually be booted.  I

> I copied them also from floppy.

> > think that is more than just the boot sector.  How are they being created?  
> > And are you sure that both the BIOS and FreeDOS can access this drive?

> I think, since it echoes something on the screen, it means that it loads
> and executes bootsector but there is some problem in it.
> 
> Also I think that this is not FreeDOS related since MSDOS don't work
> either. It says 'Not system disk or disk error'
> 
> I've also tried simple Win98 format program and it can create bootable
> flash drive but it limits size to 100mb.

This is a good clue.  But I think the boot sequence may be more complex 
than just copying the files and copying the boot sector.  There may be 
some sort of pointers to the physical sectors occupied by the system files 
built into the boot sector, and if you copy it to a different drive 
geometry these may change.

Is it also possible that FreeDOS and MSDOS are incapable of seeing the 
drive without a special driver?

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| David C Niemi  (Reston, VA, USA)  niemi at tuxers dot net |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Percentage of PCs using TCP/IP in 1993: 3.9 (source: IDC) |
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