Introduction
What it does
Getting started
Troubleshooting
CD-ROM
Mouse
Hard Discs
Sound & VESA
Start programs
Download
Used sources
Contact
Hard Discs

This is an important section:

If you format your hard disc, it’s always formatted in a certain format.

The good old DOS used to use the so called “FAT16” or simply “FAT” format. So if you want to access your hard disc with DOS, you must have a FAT16 partition on your hard drive.

The problem with FAT16 was, that it was only able to format max. of 2 GBs. As hard discs get bigger and bigger, a new format was introduced.

It was called FAT32 and is normally used by Windows95, 98 and ME.

If you use Windows XP or Windows NT it’s likely that you have a NTFS formated hard disc.

Both FAT32 and NTFS can normally not be accesed by MS DOS (except Windows DOS and some certain DOS versions).

But as most Windows user use FAT32 or NTFS, Easy Dos Boot Disk Creator includes a special driver that makes it possible, to read your Windows hard discs under DOS as well. These drivers are loaded automatically when booting your boot disc. You can of course remove these drivers to gain more memory, if you don’t need them. See Troubleshooting Guide.

FAT32 formated discs work just fine. However, the NTFS driver to acces NTFS hard discs (Windows XP and NT) is still some kind of buggy and couldn’t be tested enough, yet.

Notice!! Easy DOS Boot Disc Creator can only access FAT32 partitions up to 8 GB! If your FAT32 hard disc is larger than 8 GB, please refer to the section “ How can I access FAT32 discs larger than 8 GB?

Notice!! Easy DOS Boot Disc Creator’s NTFS device driver is only able to *read* NTFS partitions, it won’t be able to write to it. If you need to write to your NTFS drive as well, please refer to the section: How can I make my hard disc compatible, so it can be used with DOS?

Note: You should be able to install DOS programs and games to your FAT32 drives with this program. However, a lot of dos installation routines get confused by writing their data to FAT32 or NTFS drivers. As these drives are often bigger than 2 GB, DOS setup programs often claim, that there is no free disc space!

Note: Drives compressed with Double Space or Drive Space can not be access by Easy Dos Boot Disc Creator!! Refer to this section in the Troubleshooting Guide.

So if you have problems accessing your hard discs, refer to the Troubleshooting Guide and learn how to create a FAT16 partition on your hard drive without loosing Windows.

 

Easy Dos Boot Disc Creator (c) by Basti 2002, built with OpenDOS/DR DOS by Caldera