DOS ain't dead - Thanks Everyone: I'm taking a brief hiatus

CluelessInSeattl

Seattle, USA,
09.01.2013, 16:40

Thanks Everyone: I'm taking a brief hiatus (Users)

I'm grateful to all of you who have been so helpful to me over the last few weeks as I've tried to get my old MS-DOS system up and running again.

To those of you who have posted messages for me that I haven't replied to, please don't think I'm ignoring you. It's just that I've been sidetracked by a task that's taking up all my time.

I ran into a problem with some of my old software, and that problem is going to require me to back-up my entire hard disk to floppies, reformat the HD, repartition it into smaller partition sizes, and then copy back all my software and data onto the HD.

A couple of my essential programs aren't able to handle HD partitions larger than 1 GB. And I cluelessly formatted the HD on this hand-me-down laptop into 2GB partitions when I started using it.

I've begun backing up the HD to floppies, and boy! what a can of worms this task is turning out to be. So I'm going to be busy comparing all my HD directories with what's on floppies and vice versa, and labeling floppies for a few days to come.

Due to my health limitations I'm only able to work on this project for between 45 minutes and an hour each day. So this may take me a while. And is it ever tedious! Argh!

I'll be checking back in again once I get this housekeeping done, and I'll then try to pick up the message threads where we left off

Thanks again to all of you, see you soon,

---
Will in Seattle
a.k.a. "Clueless"
Running MS-DOS 6.21

RayeR

CZ,
09.01.2013, 16:47

@ CluelessInSeattl

Thanks Everyone: I'm taking a brief hiatus

Post reply

OMFG, backing up entire HDD on floppies? Isn't better to backup on another HDD or burn on DVD? Or ask some friend to do it on his computer using some USB/IDE cable for easy HDD connection? We're in 21th centrury :) And floppies are unreliable, be sure that one of 100 will 100% fail...

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Arjay

09.01.2013, 20:13

@ RayeR

GParted Live

Post reply

> Or ask some friend to do it on his computer using some
> USB/IDE cable for easy HDD connection?

CIS, I'd recommend using Clonezilla to make a backup and then after a backup has been taken... using GParted Live which is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution (CD/DVD/USB key) which boots straight into GParted a GUI to the GNOME Partition Editor application (quoting WP):

"It is used for creating, deleting, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems (works with Windows Vista / 7 System & Data partitions), reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging)."

Doug 09.01.2013, 21:04 @ Arjay	GParted Live Post reply
	Or... get a copy of Partition Magic (are there other similar programs out there that are freeware?) that non-destructively repartitions your drive. You just need enough pre-existing empty space. - Doug B.

Arjay 09.01.2013, 22:59 @ Doug	GParted Live Post reply
	> Partition Magic (are there other similar programs out > there that are freeware?) that non-destructively repartitions your drive. Yes, GParted ( Non-Destructive Partitioning with GParted ) - and other alternatives are listed here on Wikipedia.

Doug 10.01.2013, 08:16 @ Arjay	GParted Live Post reply
	Hah! I must've tuned out after reading "Clonezilla". Interesting Wikipedia list... thanks. - Doug B.