Hi Leslie: The easiest way i know of to create a FAT (might as well make it FAT32) partition is to use the LiveCD from the GParted project:
gparted.sourceforge.net This can also be run from a USB stick if your computer can boot from a USB stick. You can shrink an NTFS partition and create a new FAT partition. You have to be careful with partition ordering and the size of the restore and primary partitions on some systems. I wrote up a howto on installing FreeDOS on a WindowsXP system which is available at www.k1ea.com/hints. See Dual-boot "Real" DOS on Windows XP (0.95 beta) by Mark Bailey, KD4D At this point, i would recommend doing the partitioning with the new GParted LiveCD from gparted.sourceforge.net instead of using the older version referenced in that document. Let me know if you have any questions. Mark Bailey -------------- Original message ---------------------- From: Leslie Shrum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Okay. That helps a lot. It is an 80 gig drive with about 40 gigs of free > space, so I have plenty of space to play with. I am assuming that I need to > also install whatever games that I was going to run in freedos on the same > partition; just for simplicity's sake. If you could get me the information > on > that how to, I would be really grateful. You have been so helpful so far. I > am > less worried now that I know that it is safe to make a FAT partition. Thank > you > so much! > Leslie > >
--- Begin Message ---Okay. That helps a lot. It is an 80 gig drive with about 40 gigs of free space, so I have plenty of space to play with. I am assuming that I need to also install whatever games that I was going to run in freedos on the same partition; just for simplicity's sake. If you could get me the information on that how to, I would be really grateful. You have been so helpful so far. I am less worried now that I know that it is safe to make a FAT partition. Thank you so much! Leslie Eric Auer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi Leslie, > Okay... since I only have NTSF Drives I will use the limited floppy > method. Unless it is possible to create a FAT Partition without wipping > the whole drive. I have one hard drive which already has 2 partitions: > both are NTFS. One is labeled OS and the other is Labeled Recovery. If you have no FAT partitions, then the floppy method will not help you to install DOS anywhere on harddisk either. So you will first have to create a FAT partition to be able to install on harddisk. You can do that without data loss by using for example the partition resizer of the installer of a Linux distro of your choice. Those can make existing NTFS partitions smaller without deleting files. Your PC will be busy with this for a while. I think there was also some HowTo for "installing DOS on a NTFS- only computer" which explains the partition resizing process in more detail. Somebody on the list might know the URL of the howto. Once you made a NTFS partition smaller, you will be able to create a FAT partition and format it. I would suggest to use Linux for that as well - using DOS is not user friendly, and is more risky. If your FAT partition is no primary partition, you will have to use a boot menu like the Windows or Linux one to be able to select DOS at boot time. You may even have problems with SYS in general. Then you would either need a boot diskette to boot the DOS on your harddisk, or you would need nontrivial manual adjustments to make DOS bootable from harddisk. So the best choice would be to have a primary FAT partition to install DOS on, preferrably FAT16 as it is easier to boot from FAT16 than from FAT32. Do not make the partition too small, a few 100 MB will not hurt on a 200 GB disk. Eric ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user Hope is only as strong as the Faith that Sustains it. Faith is only as strong as the Love we give We can only truly Love when we love OURSELVES http://www.myspace.com/leslieslittlecorner --------------------------------- No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.------------------------------------------------------------------------- Take Surveys. Earn Cash. Influence the Future of IT Join SourceForge.net's Techsay panel and you'll get the chance to share your opinions on IT & business topics through brief surveys-and earn cash http://www.techsay.com/default.php?page=join.php&p=sourceforge&CID=DEVDEV_______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
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