Actual MS-DOS

[jocaan409]

If I go to the command line on my computer can I use MS-DOS to partition, change a partition, add, delete, activate, etc on a hard drive I have attached to a eSata port? 
Frank C.

[Salmon Trout]

When you write "actual MS-DOS", do you mean the command line operating system called MS-DOS whose last release was version 6.22 in 1994? Or something else?

[a117yogi]

you can try using fdisk in ms-dos or the command prompt, however this command is removed from newer operating systems. i believe xp and older have it

[jocaan409]

Yes, sorry, I mean the "operating system called MS-DOS whose last release was version 6.22 in 1994."  I have Windows 7 so fdisk does not show up.  Is there a way I can add it or do I have to go through some double boot arrangement?  For some odd reason now with years of "newbe" experience I feel I would be more comfortable using MS-DOS than using some modern day program.  I have not done a lot of partitioning, repartitioning or changing a disk to "active."  For some reason backups I made on a USB hard disk as an external backup on an old computer show that hard disk's first partition as not "active"  so I want to change it to active and clone my present system to it.   Frank C.

[camerongray]

I'm not sure how well fdisk would work on a new eSATA hard drive.  Try using the GParted LiveCD - You just boot the PC from it and you will be presented with a graphical, easy to use and powerful partitioning tool.  http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

[Salmon Trout]

I don't think there would be any problem using fdisk in a DOS environment - as long as the SATA controller has been set in the BIOS to IDE emulation mode. However, as camerongray says, GParted is a much better and more usable way of doing the things required.

jocaan409, I think you misunderstand the meaning of an "active" partition. An active partition is one that contains a bootable operating system, and usually there is only one on a system. If a partition is not active this does not mean that it is dormant or inoperative or hidden or turned off or anything like that, and I very much think that you do not (should not!) need to make any partition on an E-SATA external drive active.

[jocaan409]

OK, thanks, I'll try using Gparted.  For some reason the third partition on the hard drive is active and the first is not indicated as active.  I'm sorry this is a USB attached hard drive-I have two hard drives that can be externally connected (one is a SATA which is eSATA connected to my Windows 7 computer) and am switching around between my Windows XP laptop and Windows 7 desktop with the USB connected hard drive-the USB drive having data from my old XP computer on the 2nd and 3rd partitions.  Now, I'm trying to clone my C: on the laptop to the first partition on the USB connected external hard drive-having the first partition not active I did not see, in either Windows XP or in the Seagate Cloning program I downloaded, how to succeed in cloning the laptop to the first partition on the USB connected hard drive. The Seagate cloning program gave me an error message which I cannot remember now  and I thought the cloning program did not work because the first partition was not active.  Again maybe the GParted download would solve my problem if I tried to use it.  The USB connected hard drive is also a SATA (just with a USB adapter for the XP laptop's convenience) so the comment about not making the first partition active puzzles me. Do I not have to make the first partition active in order to clone the XP laptop to the USB externally connected SATA drive's first partition?  Thanks for your input and help.  Sorry for the rambling, I hope this makes sense.   Frank C. 

[hlwenholz]

I'm sure you've already set the partition as active in GParted, but FYI MS introduced a new command line partitioning utility called diskpart in Windows XP. It is also there in Windows Vista and Windows 7.  You need to select the disk and partition by their number (select disk 1, select partition 1) then to make the partition active you would type active. To find the disk and partition number you need to list them (list disk, list partition).

You can also set the partition active in the Disk Management function in the Computer management utility from Windows available by right-clicking the Computer in the Start menu and selecting manage.

[Geek-9pm]

Hello folks,
Here are more considerations for your MS DOS project. Recall that MS-DOS was intended for use on older slower computers with smaller disk drives.

The most practical solution is to obtain an old smaller disk drive, preferably the old IDE type. Using windows XP or using GPart make a small primary partition at the beginning of the disk. Then make one extended partition about the same size. Both partitions should be about 1 GB. The primary partition should be set active and it must be marked as that MS-DOS type. It should be formatted in the older FAT 16 format. Leave the rest of the drive blank. In  DOS having two 1GB partitions is huge.

Attempting to do such a thing with your large drive that has your other systems on is going to be very futile and risk doing some damage to the boot cable needed by your other operating systems.
Take a look into BIOS settings. You can either set the old DOS drive to be early in the sequence, or you may find another way to switch to that DOS drive just after the  POST of the BIOS.

On some computers you get the F12 this after POST and you get the auxiliary boot menu that allows you to pick which hard drive you want. Another computer I have it happens to be the F8 key, which gets to be a real nuisance if what I really want is to start up Windows in safe mode. Either way, you have to hit the right key at the right moment to get auxiliary boot menu. Check and see if the version of BIOS offers this feature. That is the best choice when you're using operating systems that just do not respect each others master boot record layout.

Contrary to common sense, master boot record has never really  standardized. it was almost standard thing. But starting with them there Windows VISTA release it got very significant changes to how the  information is placed on hard drive.  Please don't ask for details, nobody really understands it.

Just put DOS on its own little IDE drive. Use the BIOS auxiliary boot menu.

Of course this is a suggestion. A very strong suggestion. But it is possible to do it they way you are going. If you want to do it that way, let me tell you that I used to take on challenges like that and now I have to take medication every day.

[BC_Programmer]

Contrary to common sense, master boot record has never really  standardized. it was almost standard thing. But starting with them there Windows VISTA release it got very significant changes to how the  information is placed on hard drive.  Please don't ask for details, nobody really understands it.

It's been standardized for years. It contains ~445 bytes of MBR code, optional disk signatures, four 16-byte entries (one per partition, thus the maximum number of primary partitions on a drive is 4). It's always been like this. Windows Vista did not change the layout or general contents MBR, and it didn't change how information is stored on the hard drive. It seems clear that you are confusing the MBR with the boot loader, which has never been standardized.

[/quote]

[Geek-9pm]

Windows Vista did not change the layout or general contents MBR, and it didn't change how information is stored on the hard drive.

Not a factual statement.

[BC_Programmer]

Not a factual statement.

Yes. It is. Please, the onus is on the person making the claim. You made the claim that it changes the MBR and how data is stored on the hard drive. With the exception of features introduced in the version of NTFS shipped with Vista, nothing changed- and those changes didn't change any of the on-disk NTFS format anyway, which has been the same since Windows XP. GPT partitioning of course changes the lower level partitioning system, but even that still preserves the location intended for the MBR and that location still contains a perfectly valid MBR that is recognizable by older Disk utilities. (this is to prevent older tools from misrecognizing GPT-partitioned drives and overwriting them). GPT partitioning needs to be specifically selected by the user, is only supported in the 64-bit versions, and even presents a warning if the user chooses it, anyway. The Boot loader (bootmgr.sys) used by Windows Vista and 7 are different to the ones used by XP and Server 2003, but that is a file, not a disk format, and it didn't change how data was stored on a drive. If that were true, then I fail to understand how a drive can be taken from a Vista machine and have it's contents inspected by a XP machine, since if Vista changed how the data was stored XP wouldn't be able to read it. But it can, thus proving that your handwavey generalizations have no basis in reality, and can only be arranged into reassuring litanies in the blissful dreamworld of your mind.

The NTFS on-disk format has been unchanged since the introduction of Windows XP (NTFS Format 3.1) and it has remained the same in Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Stating that these are "not factual statements" does not constitute an argument unless you can present some sort of evidence to the contrary that, ideally, isn't based on ridiculous nonsense.

[Geek-9pm]

Stating that these are "not factual statements" does not constitute an argument unless you can present some sort of evidence to the contrary that, ideally, isn't based on ridiculous nonsense.

Not argument is needed. It is documented. I am sorry you have trouble reading. You are the one lost in the Labyrinth of your mind. The MBR bashing abd GOT(GUID) bashing did not stat with me. The IT people have been screaming about it for years. Where have you been?

Before you can comprehend, you must repeat 100 times.
"The MBR is not a standard."
Once you get that, the light will shine in your face. But if you don't understand that, you just won't get it.

Back to the topic. It is better to use a separate drive for DOS experiments. Older DOS utilities or  can and do mess up the MBR. It is somewhere in the Microsoft web sites. You find it.

The alternative is to use a suitable Boot manager to do want you want.

Yest, boot manager and MBR are not the same thing. Neither are they independent. Older programs and/or third-party things will mess it up.

[BC_Programmer]

"The MBR is not a standard."

Standard: "Used or accepted as normal or average"

What do 90% of all computers use? an MBR. GPT is only used in very specific circumstances. And, even a GPT partitioned drive will have a valid MBR, as I noted before. Therefore an MBR is a given for any windows system (as well as many other systems). If that's not "standard" I don't know what is. Is it an ISO standard? No. That's irrelevant anyway. Warranted the actual boot code is probably different (in fact, it is, I just checked, using the excellent MBRUTIL), but the actual layout of the MBR between XP and Vista didn't change,and the rest of the MBR aside from the boot code itself, is the same. The fact that the boot code actually changed between versions is hardly surprising; DOS uses a different MBR than NT which uses different MBR boot code than Vista/7, which in turn use different MBR bootcode than BSD or GRUB/LILO; this is hardly something work squawking so loudly about. Either way, The differences between XP and Vista's MBR reside plainly in the boot code, and the actual way data is stored is unchanged.

FDISK isn't going to rewrite the boot code within the MBR of a system unless told to do so using the /MBR switch, or if there is no MBR present. This is well documented here.

Repartitioning with Fdisk does not rewrite this information.

Naturally, third party tools from that era may act differently, but nothing posted by the OP leads me to think they plan on running anything but FDISK. The bigger problem is that MS-DOS wouldn't see the drive since it is attached through USB, and it seems more like the desire to do this is a result more of a misunderstanding of the terms involved as Salmon Trout pointed out.

From the sounds of things, they don't actually have any functionality problems with the drive at all, and their desire to fiddle about with it is purely on the basis that they have a partition set active while the others are not. Considering the fact that the active partition only determines what is booted from, and it's difficult to tell if they intend to try to boot from the drive.

[Geek-9pm]

The OP did not make it clear why he wants "actual DOS". Perhaps some users night believe that the old DOS has primitive utilities that can better manage the hard drive. Not so. These utilities wee written before significant changes were made in Hared Drive geometry and do not perform as the user might wish.

The MAR is not just an area one the hard drive where some address are stored. There are rules as ton what can be placed there. The rules have changed. The rules are not consistent .The full set of rules is not seen by a casual examination of the area. The rules have been a moving target. That is why the GUID is now the way to go.