# booting up usb drive



## jamtarts (Jan 11, 2008)

Is it possible to have an external usb drive installed with a bootable version of DOS, can this then be chosen in the bios set up as boot drive then use it to boot up as a DOS system?


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## TheOutcaste (Aug 8, 2007)

If will work if your PC will boot from a USB hard drive. Some PC's will only boot from a USB device if it emulates a floppy or LS120 Super Floppy. A floppy disk has no partitions, a hard drive does. If the PC is expecting the USB device to be a Floppy type device it won't work with a USB hard drive. USB Flash drives will usually work in this case.

HTH

Jerry


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## jamtarts (Jan 11, 2008)

TheOutcaste said:


> If will work if your PC will boot from a USB hard drive. Some PC's will only boot from a USB device if it emulates a floppy or LS120 Super Floppy. A floppy disk has no partitions, a hard drive does. If the PC is expecting the USB device to be a Floppy type device it won't work with a USB hard drive. USB Flash drives will usually work in this case.
> 
> HTH
> 
> Jerry


Thanks for your reply, I'll have a look into this, I hoped to stick on a usb hdd that can boot up as a dos system. thanks for your help:up:


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

FreeDos can be booted from an external USB hard disk.

It was one of the 12 operating systems I installed over a weekend, as documented here.

Many Linux can boot from flash card but I haven't done it with a Dos. MS systems don't like USB devices but I haven't try the emulation mode which I know works on CD. The above is a normal full installation of FreeDos.

If you want a boot loader that can boot from floppy, flash card, CD, DVD, internal hard disk, external hard disk and network then the Linux boot loader "Grub" is the one you need. There is very little a Dos can boot but Grub can boot every operating system that has ever been invented on a PC, all together in a PC if you want them.

In use Grub is like a mini operating system similar to a Dos. It is normally installed as part of a Linux but it can also be installed without an operating system attached.


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## jamtarts (Jan 11, 2008)

superb, sounds ideal, it was really just so I could install a couple of old dos games I liked, they don't work properly in xp and are messy with things like dos box so I thought I'd have a go at this, the linux option sounds like a good project too,

thanks for your help


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

Have you tried Compatibility Mode in XP?


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## jamtarts (Jan 11, 2008)

yeah, it's mainly Sensible World of Soccer, Zool and games like that, it loses the sound, but it gets messy when you use dos box, 

I hoped to just use an old 8gb drive and fill it with old dos stuff, and just do a bat file for each game, then whenever I wanted to use it just change the BIOS boot options, I'd probably not use it that often so a I don't really fancy a boot menu as they did my head in when I used Linux too. I might try an external hdd with linux option as well sounds like a good project


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## Elvandil (Aug 1, 2003)

I have DOS installed to its own partition on a laptop and use GAG as a boot manager to choose which to boot into. Works fine that way.

You do know that you can get a full-screen DOS in XP with Alt+Enter? Compatibility Mode really works well on most things.


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## TheOutcaste (Aug 8, 2007)

And again, your PC BIOS has to support booting from a USB *HARD* drive, and not just a *FLASH* drive. If your PC only works with a USB device that is seen as a floppy, even Linux won't boot from a USB Hard drive on your PC, as the PC simply will not see it as a boot device. Most newer machines that support both will usually have separate choices for each type of USB device to put in the boot order.
Also, the partition on the USB drive has to be set active to be bootable, so check that with Disk Management.

Creating a separate DOS partition and using GAG or some other boot loader as Elvandil has suggested is a good way to go if using XP's Compatibility Mode doesn't work.
If your PC doesn't support booting from a USB hard drive, you may be able to create a boot floppy/boot CD with DOS USB drivers, and access the drive that way. http://www.bootdisk.com/usb.htm has a collection of USB drivers and some examples. A search for USB DOS Drivers will provide lots of reading material

HTH

Jerry


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## saikee (Jun 11, 2004)

The mobo I have for the last years are all capable of booting from USB devices. In the earlier ones one may need to "enable" the "USB legacy support" in the Bios. Linux boot loaders can pick up USB disk and so can boot it even the none of MS boot loaders would.

After booting up the system still has to run in a USB disk and only FreeDos seems to be able to do it.

Linux boot loader Grub can be installed without a Linux attached and can be installed in any fat16 or fat32 partition which it can read. Grub does not has ntfs support and so cannot run from a ntfs partition.


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## managed (May 24, 2003)

Does it have to be on an _external_ hard drive ?

If you can connect the hard drive internally as IDE then you can simply disconnect the other hard drive(s), install DOS and then the games and away you go.
After you re-connect any other drives you can switch to the DOS drive in the Bios or via a Boot Manager (XOSL is my personal favourite).

Just a thought.


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