DOS ain't dead

I hope you guys won't mind a Windows question.

I have been searching all over for an answer.

Experts are here on BTTR.

Can the EXFAT format be used for the Windows system disk (C:)?

That's it.

SB

> Can the EXFAT format be used for the Windows system disk (C:)?
>

No, it can't, only NTFS.

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DOS-u-akbar!

In addition, MS says you shouldn't use NTFS at all on removable media, like USB flash drives or external hard drives. Likewise, they say you shouldn't use ExFAT on permanent disks, since it's specifically designed for removable media. People violate the MS recommendations all the time, of course, particularly the one about putting NTFS on removable disks.

I plan to build a Windows To Go system on a USB stick so I will
have to format it NTFS I guess.

W3

Windows on USB are usually done via compressed filesystem image file (WIM) and modified ntldr that can boot it...

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

There is this thread:

http://www.itworld.com/consumerization-it/399856/create-your-own-windows-go-usb-drive-free

What do you think, give it a try?

SB

> There is this thread:
> http://www.itworld.com/consumerization-it/399856/create-your-own-windows-go-usb-drive-free
> What do you think, give it a try?

Aha, it's Win8 new feature, I don't have experiences with it but should work. But to me it seems a bit bloat - 13GB for USB. It must take a long time to load via USB. I have some miniXP (PE) distro that occupies only 50MB on USB flash with compressed XP.WIM file

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DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> I have some miniXP (PE) distro that occupies only
> 50MB on USB flash with compressed XP.WIM file

(I had one of those too, but gave it up because most modern new machines of the last 2-4 years have AHCI on, and it didn't work with it. Did you find a workaround for that?)

I have several PCs here.

A number of them have FLOPPY connectors on the MOBO.

I have two USB floppies.

And I have an LS120 120mb super floppy drive which connects
to an ATAPI connector. LS120s are still available on EBAY.

And I have a USB version of an LS120 drive.

All equipment I have acquired over the last 10years.

And when I said that my DOS system fits on a floppy I
mean a 1.44mb floppy disk.


SB

> ... most modern new machines of the last 2-4 years have AHCI on

So far, I've always been able to turn off AHCI in the BIOS when I needed to. If you do that, though, you also need to modify the Windows boot configuration or it won't boot any more.

I suspect that not all BIOS's will even have the option to turn AHCI off, especially as time moves forward.

And I forgot to say that LS120 drives read both
LS120 superfloppys and regular 1.44mb floppies,
And very fast too.

SB

> (I had one of those too, but gave it up because most modern new machines of
> the last 2-4 years have AHCI on, and it didn't work with it. Did you find a
> workaround for that?)

I don't bother with AHCI, I always disable it as it didn't speed up under XP anyway (maybe a few 1-2%)... I heard about some newer notebooks that don't have legacy IDE mode choice in setup. Newest desktop MB I had in my hands (Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3V with UEFI) still had option for IDE mode...

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

> > ... most modern new machines of the last 2-4 years have AHCI on
>
> So far, I've always been able to turn off AHCI in the BIOS

For me it was mostly about fieldrepairs, and it is mostly to avoid a slow recovery console bootting from (external) DVD. The systems are all win7 or win8, so a winxp bootdisk is then a bit out of sync.

Adding several steps before and after then removes the utility of the stick somewhat. I've a installer stick with windows 7 though, the next time I have to do it, I'll try to boot recovery console from that.

> when I needed
> to. If you do that, though, you also need to modify the Windows boot
> configuration or it won't boot any more.

Yes, and such things I want to avoid.

> I suspect that not all BIOS's will even have the option to turn AHCI off,
> especially as time moves forward.

Many OEM versions are very spartan, and the UEFI versions are even worse. Retail mobo's are generally quite forgiving.

OEM win 8 machines often turn on a bunch of secure boot nonsense that makes life really hard.

> I don't bother with AHCI, I always disable it as it didn't speed up under
> XP anyway (maybe a few 1-2%)... I heard about some newer notebooks that
> don't have legacy IDE mode choice in setup. Newest desktop MB I had in my
> hands (Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3V with UEFI) still had option for IDE mode...

XP (and even 32-bit) is mostly toast here (both privately and professionally) and only runs on systems that were not worth the upgrade anymore (mostly Athlon XP's and Pentium-Ds)

Pity though that FPC came out with a 16-bit version months after I upgraded everything to win8

> Pity though that FPC came out with a 16-bit version months after I upgraded
> everything to win8

Have you never tried RUFUS (FreeDOS on USB) natively? Not to mention obvious other choices for emulation like VirtualBox, QEMU, BOCHS, DOSBox, etc.?

> Have you never tried RUFUS (FreeDOS on
> USB) natively? Not to mention obvious other choices for emulation like
> VirtualBox, QEMU,
> BOCHS, DOSBox, etc.?

As said, I still use an old XP box with winxp. If that perishes or must make room, I'll dive into that. Trouble is that wholly virtualized building is usually slow. Projects like dosbox seem to overfocus on gaming.

> As said, I still use an old XP box with winxp. If that perishes or must
> make room, I'll dive into that.

BOOT.INI? PLoP Boot Manager?

> Trouble is that wholly virtualized building is usually slow.

VT-X helps, but either way, there are still some bugs.

> Projects like dosbox seem to overfocus on gaming.

Indeed, only for games. I just meant, in a pinch, you could run the typical "Hello, world!" (etc.) just to make sure it still works.

And now vDOS which runs very well on my machine under Windows.

W3

I used Bootit Bear Metal from TerraByte Unlimited.

I tried PLOP but even with a lot of assistance from the author
we were never abled to get to support 5 partition groups each
with a different operating.

W3