Running defrag in DOS

[spacesurfer]

I have an old defrag command for MS-DOS 6.0. It's on a 15 mb partition that is FAT.

When I start the MS-DOS boot disk, it can't recognize the partition.

When I start the Windows 95 boot disk, the partition is recognized and assigned drive C: but can't run defrag. How do you get MS-DOS to recognize the partition like Win 95 boot disk?

Maybe this is in wrong section?

[LLXX]

15mb or 15Gb?

DOS 6.x cannot access FAT32 partitions.

DOS 7.0 can access FAT32 partitions, but does not provide a command-line defragger that supports them.

[ophiel]

why the desperate need to defrag 15mb of data? how fragmented could it be?

now onto the important question:

where on the harddrive is your dos partition physically located? at the beginning, middle, or end?

being unable to boot past the 1024 cylinder i know is an old BIOS limitation, but i'm unsure if it's also a DOS limitation.

personally i'd use partition magic to double check that the partition is indeed FAT16 and convert it if necesarry.

[spacesurfer]

Yeah, I know it sound crazy, but it's 15 megabytes. Reason I created this partition is I put my ghost executable and partition magic executable on this partition so I can use floppy to boot and run thse progs from hard drive. It's much faster. I also have some other dos programs saved there. I don't need more than 15 mb.

(You may argue I can use USB but I don't want anything but documents on my USB drive.)

@ ophiel: you're exactly right. It's at the end of my hard drive past the 1024 point so I won't be able to see it in DOS. It is FAT16--it's only a small partition so FAT16 is OK.

I just wanna be able to see the data map of the 15 mb partition. Win XP defrag won't display it. I thougt maybe I could see it in DOS using the old MS Defrag that I had saved.

Anyway, that's the end of that.

[RJARRRPCGP]

why the desperate need to defrag 15mb of data? how fragmented could it be?

now onto the important question:

where on the harddrive is your dos partition physically located? at the beginning, middle, or end?

being unable to boot past the 1024 cylinder i know is an old BIOS limitation, but i'm unsure if it's also a DOS limitation.

I dunno, because according to documentation I saw a long time ago, it said that the location of the boot files didn't matter with later versions of DOS. (5.0 and later)

If it's DOS 3.3 or earlier, then it's the most strict, the boot loader is required to be at the beginning of the HDD.

[spacesurfer]

I can see the partition when I boot from Win 95/98 boot disks and also from PC-DOS that comes with Norton Ghost 2003.

I can't see it from MS-DOS 6.x versions.

I'll have to try to put that partition at the beginning of the drive to see if it's seen by MS-DOS 6.x. I hope it doesn't change my Win XP drive assignment. It's assigned to drive C:\ and I want to keep it that way.

[jftuga]

Since it is only 15mb and you can see in under Win 95, why not copy all of the files off of the partition to a temporary location? Remove all of the files and then copy them back from your temporary location. You will have, in essence, defragged the partition.

-John

[LLXX]

Use Windows 98SE / ME defrag program to defrag it.

[Jeremy]

Remove all of the files and then copy them back from your temporary location. You will have, in essence, defragged the partition.

I don't really think that's true, since I've copied files from one drive to another and checked the drive statistics with PerfectDisk, nothing ever copies as a full chunk, there are always file fragments. And it's not my HD incase you wanted to suggest that... I've tried on many different drives before, same thing.