DOS and USB hard drive

[herbalist]

Went through the whole process again last night with a few changes. The system I'm copying is the entire "E" drive, which is the primary partition of the primary master hard drive. I extracted the archive to a folder on a logical drive on the external hard drive (J:\Edrive\) using 7zip while in Windows, then compared the 2 with WinMerge. They were identical, so the archive is complete and correct. I erased the external drive, rebooted to DOS, then used 7za to extract the same archive to the same location. This time the extraction process took 3:28 +/- 5 minutes. Most of the extraction process moved fairly quick, except for a couple of subfolders in E:\Program Files\X-Setup Pro. The plugins folder which contained over 900 plugins (*.xpl) was the worst. This folder took over half of the total time, even though it totals only 1.7MB. Why, I don't know, but I will remove X-setup before the next test.

WinMerge reports several differences between the two this time. 3 contain characters that are probably a problem in DOS.

• Norwegian (Bokmål).txt
  
• µTorrent.lnk
  
• 3½ Floppy (A).lnk
  

These shouldn't be a problem.

2 more may be problems because of the length of the paths.

• E:\Program Files\Connectix\Virtual PC 5.1 Online Installer\Installer\program files\Connectix
  
• E:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\default\ycmdj0ug.slt\chrome
  

Both of these folders and their contents are missing from the DOS extracted copy. I'm not sure if the fact that the destination was a folder affected this. The next test will extract directly to the "J" drive, not to a folder on it.

The last 2 that are missing I have no explanation or ideas for.

• E:\WINDOWS\Desktop\olddos.exe
  
• E:\WINDOWS\Win95_ActiveAccessibility_Redist_13.exe
  

At the moment, I'm not sure if I'm dealing with DOS limitations, limitations or bugs in 7za.exe, DOS USB driver issues, the configuration of my bootdisk, or all of the above combined. Anyone have any ideas?

While I'm thinking about it, anyone know of an application or an easy way to convert a boot floppy to an img file that I can use with my burner to make bootable CDs?

Thanks

Rick

[jaclaz]

The last 2 that are missing I have no explanation or ideas for.

• E:\WINDOWS\Desktop\olddos.exe
  
• E:\WINDOWS\Win95_ActiveAccessibility_Redist_13.exe
  

At the moment, I'm not sure if I'm dealing with DOS limitations, limitations or bugs in 7za.exe, DOS USB driver issues, the configuration of my bootdisk, or all of the above combined. Anyone have any ideas?

All the others have an explanation, these two are tough ones?

You may want to go along the (old) path of LFN thingies, but if the end goal is to IMAGE the drives/partitions, why not using a "proper" app?:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/index.html

http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/todisk.html

I don't think that a smaller level of compression (from the ZLIB library) would be that bad, when compared with the possible problems that may arise like the one you listed by using a file based approach.

While I'm thinking about it, anyone know of an application or an easy way to convert a boot floppy to an img file that I can use with my burner to make bootable CDs?

Thanks

Rick

You joking right?

There are thousands of them, here is what I find best one.

DDCOPY:

http://users.telenet.be/jbosman/applications.html

jaclaz

Edited December 14, 2008 by jaclaz

[herbalist]

You may want to go along the (old) path of LFN thingies, but if the end goal is to IMAGE the drives/partitions, why not using a "proper" app?:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/index.html

http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/todisk.html

I don't think that a smaller level of compression (from the ZLIB library) would be that bad, when compared with the possible problems that may arise like the one you listed by using a file based approach.

Imaging entire drives and partitions is part of what I want to do. I already have Acronis, which does that just fine. I'd also like to be able to image specific folders and subfolders. One of the main reasons I chose to use 7zip archives is so I could access those archives from within Windows or DOS. So far, I haven't found anything else that can open an Acronis image file. There's also a big size difference between an Acronis image and a 7zip image. On its maximum compression, Acronis compressed a drive with 525MB on it down to 260MB. 7zip compressed the same drive to 167MB. If the same ratio applies to all the Acronis images I'm storing, I can recover almost 12GB of space and have the benefit of being able to open those images with conventional archiving software. My external drive is getting quite full and it's going to be a while before I can afford more storage space. I'm also working on another project that requires me to be able to extract such archives in DOS.

While I'm thinking about it, anyone know of an application or an easy way to convert a boot floppy to an img file that I can use with my burner to make bootable CDs?

You joking right?

There are thousands of them, here is what I find best one.

DDCOPY:

http://users.telenet.be/jbosman/applications.html

I wish I was joking. This is fairly new to me. I've done very little with boot images, partition tables, etc. For me, fixing the external drive was a major learning experience, some of which was quite surprising. It would seem that using a GParted CD to set up the external drive was the source of most of my problems. When I used GParted to repartition the drive again, I couldn't access the new partitions in DOS again. When I used Partition Table Doctor to fix the boot sectors, then I could access them in DOS.

It turns out that I already have an app that could create an .img file but didn't know it. WinISO can make an image from a boot floppy, with a .WBT file extension. I used an existing boot image to make a floppy, then had WinISO save it in its own format. It turns out that their WBT files are img files. The MD5's of the 2 files were exactly the same. I changed the extension and my burner accepted it. The CD works fine.

I have made 2 more 7zip images of the "E" drive using different compression levels. Each took about 45 minutes to make, thanks to my underpowered hardware. I'll try extracting them in DOS either tonight or tomorrow and see what happens.

Rick