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#1
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What is the best product to format Thumb drives.
What do people use to partition and format thumb drives these days
(load boot sectors etc) I have an old application from HP that kind of works but it is not easy to do. |
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#2
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What is the best product to format Thumb drives.
wrote:
What do people use to partition and format thumb drives these days (load boot sectors etc) I have an old application from HP that kind of works but it is not easy to do. I don't know about "best", but Windows can directly format it in FAT32, and MiniTool Partition Wizard or Easeus Partition Manager works well for partitioning for me: https://www.minitool.com/partition-m...zard-home.html https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html Or maybe you're looking for more (not sure). |
#3
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What is the best product to format Thumb drives.
On Mon, 24 Sep 2018 22:57:35 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote: wrote: What do people use to partition and format thumb drives these days (load boot sectors etc) I have an old application from HP that kind of works but it is not easy to do. I don't know about "best", but Windows can directly format it in FAT32, and MiniTool Partition Wizard or Easeus Partition Manager works well for partitioning for me: https://www.minitool.com/partition-m...zard-home.html https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html Or maybe you're looking for more (not sure). Yeah I was just trying to make a short title when I said format. Sorry I understand that is trivial. I was really talking about making partitions and loading bootable OS's. Does that partition manager make active partitions and load a working boot sector? (Like from the OS you are using) I am really thinking about making an XP thumb or two and I haven't done it since I made my DOS and W/98 drives I seem to remember that being sort of clunky. I am really trying to avoid one more hard drive in this machine but I may have to embrace the devil and load 7 on it. I would just like to take a 32g thumb and clone my C: first so I can go back in time. The reality is less than 5% of my day would be enhanced by 7 at all but there are still a few things. Another question. Back in the olden days you could boot from a small drive and then link to another drive for your OS files and work space. It was a common way to run DOS on your OS/2 machine. You could do it with W/98 too. Is there a way to do that in XP so I can boot from a relatively small thumb source and actually do business on a hard drive? I understand moving "Program Files" and the data repositories but how about the registry ... and how often does that actually get hit? I have been in the computer business (vacuum tube days) to know that when we started "paging" you run at the speed of your DASD. |
#4
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What is the best product to format Thumb drives.
g,
What do people use to partition ...thumb drives these days They don't. An USB memory stick is a so-called "removable drive", and the OS only recognises the first partition on it. Don't ask me why, I've also wondered about that. Would have loved to have multi-partition sticks, especially as they are getting bigger-and-bigger these days. What do people use to ... format thumb drives these days There are several build-in methods to format drives, with the simplest one being the rightclick on the drive and selecting format. But you can also do it from the "disk manager" (under "administrative tools"), or with either the "format" or "diskpart" commandline utilities XP also offers (the latter is very powerfull, but also rather easy to make mistakes with. Do not use, unles you know what you are doing - most likely also allows you to create multiple partitions on your thumbdrive, regardless of the OS refusing to recognise them). What do people use to ....load boot sectors etc. Normally you do not need to do that. The formatting process includes putting a bootsector on the drive. Only when you want to do use a different OS on that stick you might need to change it. And for those situations the program which puts the another OSes files on the thumbdrive most often also prepairs the sticks filesystem to be actually bootable for it. But if you really need to replace the bootsector than there are a number of (very) small programs availabe which just do that (and *only* that): point to stick, point to bootsector file and press enter. Done. :-) Regards, Rudy Wieser P.s. I've read "boot sector" as meaning exactly that, and not as (possibly) *master* boot sector (which only exists on partitioned drives). |
#5
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What is the best product to format Thumb drives.
g,
I was really talking about making partitions and loading bootable OS's. If you find a way to actually boot XP from a thumbdrive that please let me know, as I would also like to do that. The problem is that halfway the bootprocess the USB drives get initialized (managing of them taken over by the OS), meaning the "legacy" support disappears, and with it the access to the drive & further needed files - which aborts the booting process. I would just like to take a 32g thumb and clone my C: first so I can go back in time. In that case I would suggest you go look for a partition backup program, and just let it do its thing. Most of those will allow you to use USB thumbdrives (regardless of formatted with FAT/FAT32, NTFS or other) to store the backups onto. Combine that with the backup program on, and booted from a CD and you have a restore method thats also not susceptible to possible (deep-rooted) malware. Though you will have to look for an easy-to-use one though. I've recently tried a Linux-based one which turned out to be a jumble of linked programs and presented me with a ****load of questions before making the actual backup - and *no* way to store it in a kind of configuration (for easy restoring or repeated backup-making). :-( Is there a way to do that in XP so I can boot from a relatively small thumb source and actually do business on a hard drive? As far as I know ? No (see above). You could boot from another OS like linux though (not W98, as it does not support filesystems over FAT32). But that would mean you would need to learn how to use that OS, and its tools too. Not an easy solution. That is, *maybe* the "rescue diskette" (the OS suggests you to make) could be helpful ? It can boot into an environment where you can use (its) programs ... Regards, Rudy Wieser |
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