> On Oct 15, 2024, at 10:35 PM, Robert Thorpe via Freedos-user > <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote: > > May I suggest installing FreeDOS to a USB flash drive. That is to one > of those little USB pendrives/ USB keys. > > I don't mean installing from a pendrive, I mean installing *to* one. > For FreeDOS you really don't need a large hard drive. 2GB is sufficient > and most USB keys are easily fast enough to keep up with DOS. > > With the PC off, disconnect your drive containing loads of partitions. > Then plug in a USB key with the USB installer on it and another blank > USB key. Then install from the first one to the second. This should > work if both are plugged in while the PC is being booted. > > BR, > Robert Thorpe
SD cards are a good choice as well. I used to multi-boot my Pentium Pro mostly using a few partitions and System Commander. But, it was always a pain keeping everything working properly. So, I bought a simple SD to IDE adapter off Amazon for about $15, designed and 3D printed a 5.25” bay mount for it. Nowadays, I just throw in an SD card up to 128gb and run whatever OS from that on the 686 using the internal HDs for shared data. It makes switching between things like PC-DOS, MS-DOS, OpenDOS, FreeDOS, Windows 3.11, 95, 98, 98SE and Linux variants very easy. Just power off, swap cards and power on. Additionally, it makes baking things up very easy. Just throw the SD card into my Linux box and use DD. No longer need to worry about hard disk failures, partition table or file system corruption or any of that garbage. Highly recommend this option for using a large number of OSs on one machine. > > Felix Miata via Freedos-user <freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net> > writes: > >> Felix Miata composed on 2024-10-14 20:47 (UTC-0400): >> >>> After at least 3 decades, one might think a DOS disk partitioner, or the >>> FreeDOS >>> installer, might have acquired an ability to not disturb anything that is >>> part of >>> the target partition. No such was or is apparent. Now that FreeDOS is >>> installed, >>> only it can be booted, because it presumed it OK to move the boot flag off >>> the >>> partition on which I placed it. Fdisk remains of the errant notion that the >>> boot >>> flag can only be valid on a DOS partition, which is wholly untrue. Now I >>> must >>> locate some bootable Linux CD to boot for the singular purpose of changing >>> two >>> bytes in the partition table in order to make my other 20+ operating systems >>> bootable again. >> >>> What other damage is awaiting my discovery once the boot flag is back where >>> it was? >> >> Turns out, lots of damage: about 29 logical partitions deleted. The >> following is how I > > > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
