NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS

Ant wrote:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

V15.2 from 11/2012. No more updates I assume?

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/faq/
"This website is being developed by a few long term users and fans of
Hiren¢s BootCD. Hiren¢s BootCD saved our lifes and helped us many times.
We thank and appreciate Hiren for develeping this great BootCD."
"This website is not related with Hiren."

The implication is that Hiren hasn't been involved with his original
project for some time. They don't mention if he died or chose to
abandon his project or why he is absent.

"Donations made over the Donation link on this website directly goes to
developer Hiren, we don¢t get anything from this donations."

Well, hope they aren't forwarding the donations to his heirs. The above
web site gives Hiren's home page, which is at:

https://www.hiren.info/

That's Hiren's home page. You cannto get his BootCD project from his
site. is reported as valid (it is still defined).
Google kills inactive accounts over 9 months old.

Does anyone know if there is a NTFS formatter that runs in DOS?

Note: I am willing to pay for it.

What I would like to be able to do is put this NTFS formatter on a
bootable floppy disk. Next, power up my old computer (with a floppy disk
drive), and use the NTFS formatter to format the hard drive.
Note: I do not want to install an OS on the hard drive.

Thank You in advance, John



Dos? are you sure about it? what is your operating system? 98Se, 98, 95?

Try this link:

https://superuser.com/questions/258720/how-can-i-format-a-ntfs-drive-from-dos

One post seems to suggest using Linux Live DVD to format the disk!!.
God knows how this works.

Hi Good Guy,

The idea of using "Linux Live DVD" is a very appealing alternative.
Note: I did not try that link above yet. I will later.

I assume I can download the .ISO image file and use Roxio to
burn a DVD. Note: I used Roxio many times to burn CDs & DVDs or
make images of CDs & DVDs.

My internet speed is not the fastest. It takes about 3 hrs to download
a 1 GB file. Do you or anyone know the size of "Linux Live" DVD image?

Thank You in advance, John

On Sat, 20 May 2017 11:12:04 -0700, Mike Easter wrote:

wrote:

Does anyone know if there is a NTFS formatter that runs in DOS?

format.com

Note: I am willing to pay for it.

What I would like to be able to do is put this NTFS formatter on a
bootable floppy disk. Next, power up my old computer (with a floppy disk
drive), and use the NTFS formatter to format the hard drive.
Note: I do not want to install an OS on the hard drive.

Hiren's boot CD has a myriad of freeware tools including DOS tools such
as format.com.

The .info site doesn't have the .iso but the .org does.

https://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd All in One Bootable CD which has
all these utilities

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Hi,
An earlier reply mentioned "Linux Live" CD that allows you to format
the HD in NTFS format.

I never used Linux, but I am hearing a lot about the Linux OS from
some of the ham radio operators I had a conversation(s) with in the past.

I believe I can download the CD/DVD image (.ISO) for Linux Live,
but I need to find out how big the file is. Note: It takes about 3 hrs
to download a 1 GHZ size file since I don't have the fastest internet
speed.
John N3AOF

wrote:


My internet speed is not the fastest. It takes about 3 hrs to download
a 1 GB file. Do you or anyone know the size of "Linux Live" DVD image?

Thank You in advance, John

Years ago, the file was only 600MB. Now, it's 1.4GB.
It's 1.3GB on a distro with "lightweight" DE, or maybe
for the 32-bit version. At least 100MB of that will be
LibreOffice on every copy.

64-bit version - uses multilib, supports 32-bit and 64-bit executables

32-bit version - just handles 32-bit programs (provided in Repo like the
other version). May use PAE (to access memory above 4GB).
A single program only has a 4GB address space. While using
the stuff, you probably won't even be "aware" what
bitness is at play.

Potential rough edges on 64-bit, is plugins for browsers. Maybe
getting a good 64-bit Adobe Flash plugin was a problem. I don't
know what the "rough edge list" is today. There might be some
other browser plugins causing 64-bit problems.

I keep 32-bit versions to run in VPC2007 or Windows Virtual PC.
VirtualBox will run anything (I think even 64-bit Guests on
a 23-bit OS, subject to an actual 64-bit CPU). I typically use
64-bit versions to boot the Test Machine. For distros used
for regular maintenance purposes on the Test Hachine, those
go on USB2 sticks. The 30MB/sec random access on a USB2 stick
gives shorter boot times, then the chug-chug-chug of my DVD drive.
But if I want to "reference boot" a distro (infrequent access),
those are on DVD. I can't afford USB sticks for everything.

On the boot command line (sometimes invoked with the tab key),
you can add extra arguments. I might remove "splash" and instead
put "TORAM=yes". That causes the entire 1.4GB DVD to be read into
RAM. Then, the DVD can be ejected from the drive. And the OS runs
off the file system copied into RAM. A good size machine for that
purpose, is in the 3GB to 4GB range. Back when the distros were
in the 600MB range, you could take your TUV4X with 1.5GB
of RAM, and do a "TORAM" on a machine like that. If you don't
do "TORAM", a machine with less RAM can be used, but the
DVD stays in the drive for the entire session. A good *minimum*
size for non-Puppy distros, is 768MB without TORAM. If you store
the whole DVD in RAM, that means starting with a larger machine
for the runtime.

There are some really large distros. I think I have a 3GB Gentoo,
and I might have had something that surpassed 4GB. But generally,
1.4GB is a typical situation today.

The more "off-road" you go, the more interesting things you
can find. Puppy Linux comes on rather small downloads, and
this particular flavor is a 64-bit version.

http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/iso/

Fatdog64-710.iso Dec.03,2016 360MB

So you can find examples that are smaller.

Other Puppy distros will be smaller than that. One problem
with Puppy, is it has practically *no* drivers for my modern
Test Machine. The FatDog should be better, as it's forced to
be a bit more modern than kernel 2.6. Puppy runs perfectly
on my year 2000 440BX machine (all drivers loaded). Just
don't expect miracles on your really modern computers.

A sample of just some of the distros, is the list on the right
hand side (scroll down) on this site. This will give you some
idea of the "level of interest" when people visit the site.
That tells you "what other people wanted to try", approximately.

http://distrowatch.com/

And this picture, is a temporal map. Click the mouse to
use your browser zoom. If your browser machine is gutless,
this will take a moment to load. It's a little sluggo here.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...meline.svg.png

And that map isn't even complete. Fatdog is missing from the
Puppy tree.

Paul

On Sun, 21 May 2017 19:27:04 +0100, Kerr Mudd-John wrote:

On Sun, 21 May 2017 10:44:34 +0100, wrote:

Does anyone know if there is a NTFS formatter that runs in DOS?

Note: I am willing to pay for it.

What I would like to be able to do is put this NTFS formatter
on a
bootable floppy disk. Next, power up my old computer (with a floppy
disk
drive), and use the NTFS formatter to format the hard drive.
Note: I do not want to install an OS on the hard drive.

Thank You in advance, John



Dos? are you sure about it? what is your operating system? 98Se, 98,
95?

Try this link:

https://superuser.com/questions/258720/how-can-i-format-a-ntfs-drive-from-dos

One post seems to suggest using Linux Live DVD to format the disk!!.
God knows how this works.

Hi Good Guy,

The idea of using "Linux Live DVD" is a very appealing alternative.
Note: I did not try that link above yet. I will later.

I assume I can download the .ISO image file and use Roxio to
burn a DVD. Note: I used Roxio many times to burn CDs & DVDs or
make images of CDs & DVDs.

My internet speed is not the fastest. It takes about 3 hrs to
download
a 1 GB file. Do you or anyone know the size of "Linux Live" DVD image?

Thank You in advance, John


If all you need is the gparted bit, then you can go for a minimalist
linux distro, such as Puppy.
or this "business card sized" one that's twice the size (but updated
more recently)
http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=09727

Personally, I'd use xPud, as IMO it's the quickest smallest distro, and
then add gparted.opt

main:
http://xpud.org/download.en.html

Gparted: ("Utilities")
http://mesrss.free.fr/xpud/opt/
download and put in "/opt" folder.



--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug

On 05/19/2017 08:37 AM, wrote:
Hi,

Does anyone know if there is a NTFS formatter that runs in DOS?

Note: I am willing to pay for it.

What I would like to be able to do is put this NTFS formatter on a
bootable floppy disk. Next, power up my old computer (with a floppy disk
drive), and use the NTFS formatter to format the hard drive.
Note: I do not want to install an OS on the hard drive.

Thank You in advance, John





Not from a floppy

but you can get a Hiren's boot cd

VanguardLH wrote:
Ant wrote:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

V15.2 from 11/2012. No more updates I assume?

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/faq/
"This website is being developed by a few long term users and fans of
Hiren???s BootCD. Hiren???s BootCD saved our lifes and helped us many times.
We thank and appreciate Hiren for develeping this great BootCD."
"This website is not related with Hiren."

The implication is that Hiren hasn't been involved with his original
project for some time. They don't mention if he died or chose to
abandon his project or why he is absent.

"Donations made over the Donation link on this website directly goes to
developer Hiren, we don???t get anything from this donations."

Well, hope they aren't forwarding the donations to his heirs. The above
web site gives Hiren's home page, which is at:

https://www.hiren.info/

That's Hiren's home page. You cannto get his BootCD project from his
site. is reported as valid (it is still defined).
Google kills inactive accounts over 9 months old.

Thanks. I wonder if there are any good updated replacements out there.
--
Quote of the Week: "In every enemy that is an ant, behold an elephant." --Turkish
Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
/\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site)
/ /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net
| |o o| |
\ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit-
( ) ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link.

On 5/21/2017 9:21 PM, Ant wrote:
VanguardLH wrote:
Ant wrote:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

V15.2 from 11/2012. No more updates I assume?

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/faq/
"This website is being developed by a few long term users and fans of
Hiren???s BootCD. Hiren???s BootCD saved our lifes and helped us many times.
We thank and appreciate Hiren for develeping this great BootCD."
"This website is not related with Hiren."

The implication is that Hiren hasn't been involved with his original
project for some time. They don't mention if he died or chose to
abandon his project or why he is absent.

"Donations made over the Donation link on this website directly goes to
developer Hiren, we don???t get anything from this donations."

Well, hope they aren't forwarding the donations to his heirs. The above
web site gives Hiren's home page, which is at:

https://www.hiren.info/

That's Hiren's home page. You cannto get his BootCD project from his
site. is reported as valid (it is still defined).
Google kills inactive accounts over 9 months old.

Thanks. I wonder if there are any good updated replacements out there.

http://alternativeto.net/software/hiren39s-bootcd/
I played with Gandalf's.
Don't remember why i didn't like it.

On Sun, 21 May 2017 23:54:01 +0100, philo wrote:

On 05/19/2017 08:37 AM, wrote:
Hi,
Does anyone know if there is a NTFS formatter that runs in DOS?
Note: I am willing to pay for it.
What I would like to be able to do is put this NTFS formatter
on a
bootable floppy disk. Next, power up my old computer (with a floppy
disk
drive), and use the NTFS formatter to format the hard drive.
Note: I do not want to install an OS on the hard drive.
Thank You in advance, John




Not from a floppy


When I did builds, you had to allow the install process of Windows (XP
back then) to go through the format (or change of format) after the dos
boot disk had set the harddisk partition type to NTFS.
Maybe you could interrupt the install process at that point?

but you can get a Hiren's boot cd

or Avira has a boot disk with ntfs4dos, it might be possible to hack that.

--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug

On 5/21/2017 7:47 AM, wrote:

Hi,
An earlier reply mentioned "Linux Live" CD that allows you to format
the HD in NTFS format.

I never used Linux, but I am hearing a lot about the Linux OS from
some of the ham radio operators I had a conversation(s) with in the past.

I believe I can download the CD/DVD image (.ISO) for Linux Live,
but I need to find out how big the file is. Note: It takes about 3 hrs
to download a 1 GHZ size file since I don't have the fastest internet
speed.
John N3AOF


John:

Information, including size, and links to lots of live CDs here;

http://livecdlist.com/

HTH & GL

John


--