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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
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 |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
On 05/19/17 19:46, Good Guy wrote:
On 19/05/2017 14:37, 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 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. Yes, you can format ntfs from Linux, this for it's not a crippled OS like microsoft-windows. |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
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. You cannot run a program without an OS. So, yes, there WILL be an OS on your floppy disk or from whatever you boot. It might be one of the free ones or licensed ones but there will be one there. An application cannot run itself - unless written in assembly to the instruction set of the CPU on the particular host where you load that self-executable. Assembler programmers coding for a specific CPU are rare. Assembler progammers coding for a CPU [family] are not -- they're called OS programmers. In fact, you already mentioned an OS in your inquiry: DOS (which could be one of several varieties). DOS = Disk Operating System. That's a general term for an operating system on its loading scheme. The DOS you probably meant could be: PC-DOS, MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, Caldera OpenDOS, FreeDOS, or DR-DOS (aka Novell DOS). There are other [older] DOS'es, like CP/M, but those won't do you much good. You cannot format to NTFS using PC/MS/IBM-DOS. Those do not have NTFS support. You need to use one that understands NTFS, or you have to add support for NTFS to DOS (e.g., NTFS4DOS). I haven't bother to check if the non-MS/IBM flavors added support for NTFS. Ever heard of gparted (GNOME Partition Editor), a GTK+ front end (to provide a GUI) to GNU Parted? Yep, that boots an OS (Linux) to then run its programs (tools). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GParted |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
VanguardLH wrote:
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. You cannot run a program without an OS. ( Actually, you can :-) ) memtest86+ And to show you how "badass" the developers of that were, the floppy diskette with the program on it, has no file system :-) So two concepts are killed in one shot. And I think the idea is great. And the third concept it has, is code movement. The program is able to lift itself in memory, then jump to the new location and execute. That helps extend the areas of memory it can test. So at one instant, the program might be at location 0x10000, and at the next, it's at 0x30000. Then it moves back again later. And that means the program copies itself, over and over again, as it moves to get out of the way of the testing. So the program tends to flout convention. It looks like something an old assembler programmer would do, to show you what "close to the metal" looks like. Paul |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
In message , Paul
writes: VanguardLH wrote: [] You cannot run a program without an OS. ( Actually, you can :-) ) memtest86+ And to show you how "badass" the developers of that were, the floppy diskette with the program on it, has no file system :-) So two concepts are killed in one shot. [] It _is_ a great utility. It still requires the firmware in the BIOS (and is there any in a floppy drive? I can't remember) to know how to operate the floppy drive, and load from it ... (-: (Ah, BRENDA, the [7 bit, _ones_ complement arithmetic, _serial_ processing - it was an oddball!] machine I first computed on: set up the switches, press load, set up the switches, press load ... OK, only 16 memory locations, 8 possible instructions ... [though I suppose even _those_ implied some "firmware" ...]) -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf Illinc fui et illud feci, habe tunicam? |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
On 5/19/17 11:46 AM, Good Guy wrote:
One post seems to suggest using Linux Live DVD to format the disk!!. God knows how this works. Works quite well, if you have a bit of knowledge. And a modern distro, at least most of the one's I've experimented with, look surprisingly like using Windows. But there seems to be a variety of partitioning utilities, something different for each distro. Or... You could download Gparted, the Gnome Partition Editor, install in a disk, possibly a USB stick, and boot from it. Looks a lot like most Windows partitioning program. I don't remember for sure, but it may format Apple's HFS system. -- Ken Mac OS X 10.11.6 Firefox 53.0.2 (64 bit) Thunderbird 52.0 "My brain is like lightning, a quick flash and it's gone!" |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul writes: VanguardLH wrote: [] You cannot run a program without an OS. ( Actually, you can :-) ) memtest86+ And to show you how "badass" the developers of that were, the floppy diskette with the program on it, has no file system :-) So two concepts are killed in one shot. [] It _is_ a great utility. It still requires the firmware in the BIOS (and is there any in a floppy drive? I can't remember) to know how to operate the floppy drive, and load from it ... (-: (Ah, BRENDA, the [7 bit, _ones_ complement arithmetic, _serial_ processing - it was an oddball!] machine I first computed on: set up the switches, press load, set up the switches, press load ... OK, only 16 memory locations, 8 possible instructions ... [though I suppose even _those_ implied some "firmware" ...]) The BIOS is definitely an enabler. You can think of some of the BIOS code as being "drivers". And the floppy read operation is supported by BIOS calls. Once the program is loaded, you can pop the floppy out of the drive, as it is not referenced while the program is running. What an OS provides, is a scheduler, and a means of sharing compute power over multiple tasks. In the case of memtest86+ it has a single purpose, the code can just keep running, so no scheduler is involved. The program does listen to the keyboard (and as far as I know, there's some sort of BIOS call for that). At times, I'm really surprised no other developers are doing this stuff. Think of all the neat test programs you could write, for bringing up new computers, that could be done that way. Paul |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
On Sat, 20 May 2017 11:01:25 -0400, Paul
wrote: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , Paul writes: VanguardLH wrote: [] You cannot run a program without an OS. ( Actually, you can :-) ) memtest86+ And to show you how "badass" the developers of that were, the floppy diskette with the program on it, has no file system :-) So two concepts are killed in one shot. [] It _is_ a great utility. It still requires the firmware in the BIOS (and is there any in a floppy drive? I can't remember) to know how to operate the floppy drive, and load from it ... (-: (Ah, BRENDA, the [7 bit, _ones_ complement arithmetic, _serial_ processing - it was an oddball!] machine I first computed on: set up the switches, press load, set up the switches, press load ... OK, only 16 memory locations, 8 possible instructions ... [though I suppose even _those_ implied some "firmware" ...]) The BIOS is definitely an enabler. You can think of some of the BIOS code as being "drivers". And the floppy read operation is supported by BIOS calls. Once the program is loaded, you can pop the floppy out of the drive, as it is not referenced while the program is running. What an OS provides, is a scheduler, and a means of sharing compute power over multiple tasks. In the case of memtest86+ it has a single purpose, the code can just keep running, so no scheduler is involved. The program does listen to the keyboard (and as far as I know, there's some sort of BIOS call for that). At times, I'm really surprised no other developers are doing this stuff. Think of all the neat test programs you could write, for bringing up new computers, that could be done that way. Paul Back in the olden days IBM had a lot of test programs that ran at the BIOS/Machine language level. Most of the PS/2 stuff ran that way. The early PCs had BASIC in the BIOS. No OS necessary. |
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
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/ -- Mike Easter |
#14
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NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS
Paul wrote:
VanguardLH wrote: 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. You cannot run a program without an OS. ( Actually, you can :-) ) memtest86+ And to show you how "badass" the developers of that were, the floppy diskette with the program on it, has no file system :-) So two concepts are killed in one shot. And I think the idea is great. And the third concept it has, is code movement. The program is able to lift itself in memory, then jump to the new location and execute. That helps extend the areas of memory it can test. So at one instant, the program might be at location 0x10000, and at the next, it's at 0x30000. Then it moves back again later. And that means the program copies itself, over and over again, as it moves to get out of the way of the testing. So the program tends to flout convention. It looks like something an old assembler programmer would do, to show you what "close to the metal" looks like. Paul The part you snipped from my message: unless written in assembly to the instruction set of the CPU on the particular host where you load that self-executable. They built their own loader. That's in assembly. DOS would load the program into memory and then pass control to it. Before DOS gets loaded, its boot loader has to load the DOS' own kernel. That's what the boot loader for memtest does: load their executable code into memory and pass control to it. As mentioned, assembler code written to the CPU instruction set can eliminate the need for an OS. Well, the above would work *if* that's how they wanted to do it. I downloaded the source code and started looking in text files. They use a Linux kernel as the OS to then load their program. 17) Acknowledgments ... - The initial versions of the source files bootsect.S, setup.S, head.S and build.c are from the Linux 1.2.1 kernel and have been heavily modified. So they started with a Linux distro and then modified it so it became their own fork. They borrowed the bootstrap and boot loaders instead of starting from scratch to code their own in assembler. Also, there is a mt86+_loader.asm file: an assembler coded loader so they do use their own, as mentioned above, to load the program but then why would they need Linux? When I looked inside the .asm file, their boot sector load (bootsect.s), necessarily constrained by the 512-byte size of a sector, loads this OS boot loader that loads and passes control to the OS image for their Linux. Memtest isn't the only software that I've run across that employs its own bootstrap and boot loader code to then load an executable image into memory and pass control to that memory image. I've seen hardware diagnotic tools do the same. There is probably several others that I no longer remember that code in assembler to the CPU instruction set to eliminate the need for a an OS kernel. |
#15
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Hiren's BootCD (was NTFS Formatter that Runs in DOS)
http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/
V15.2 from 11/2012. No more updates I assume? -- 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. |
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