No CDROM, No Floppy... No Dice?

[JC42]

Hi All,

Sorry if this has been addressed, but I've had no luck researching this.. I have a Dell Dimension 2400 running Win XP that came with no floppy drive. I successfully upgraded my two drive Tivo two years ago on my old computer which had a floppy drive. I'd like to replace both my Tivo drives with dual 120G using MSFTools 2.0. The problem:

I have to use all primary and secondary IDE positions positions for my two tivo source and two new target drives, so I have to disconnect my main hard drive and CDROM to accomplish this. With no floppy and no CDROM, how do I boot into MSFTools? I'd like to keep my recordings if possible..

I made a bootable usb key (dos), so that's an option but I don't know how to make a usb key that will boot into MSFTools..

Ay ideas?

[Gunnyman]

Damn Small Linux
compiled with a kernel that can read the MFS file system SHOULD work.

[Dkerr24]

Either that or just upgrade to a single large hard drive to save yourself the dual drive headaches.

[TydalForce]

Could you not get one of those bootable .ISO images and "burn" it to the bootable USB drive? Those images are standalone bootable, everything you need. The only question is, how do you get it onto the USB drive?

An IDE controller card might be an option too.

[JC42]

Thanks for the replies..

Gunnyman - good suggestion, I'll research that.

Dkerr24 - Yes, that's an option as well, I was thinking it would be easier and perhaps cheaper to purchase two 120s instead of 1 300, but I may have to consider that. Is it relatively easy to go from an upgraded 2 harddrive config back to one?

Tydalforce - I thought of that as well but haven't been able to make it work. There is a good program out there called winimage that seems like the right choice, but after numerous attempts I wasn't able to get it to write the MFS iso to my usb key (write disk function is grayed out). General consensus on the winimage forum is that this isn't possible because of the ISO9960 (CD) format of the iso file (need FAT for usb key)..

[classicsat]

You can likely extact the ISO contents onto the drive, and use loadlin or similar to load the Linux.

[Dkerr24]

I bought a 300gb drive for $99, so yeah it should be cheaper than buying two 120gb drives.

[TydalForce]

General consensus on the winimage forum is that this isn't possible because of the ISO9960 (CD) format of the iso file (need FAT for usb key)..

Maybe if you completely delete the existing partition from your USB key first? I know most of them ship with FAT partitions, but they're not required. I frequently have mine formatted as HFS+ for better performance with my PowerBook.

Or, OOH here you go....

Isn't there a bootable floppy image somewhere? Could you copy *that* to the USB drive?

[JC42]

Thanks again for the replies..

Classicsat - Good suggestion, I'll give that a try

Dkerr24 - Glad to hear the 300s won't break the bank, I think that's the solution I'll end up going with. I'll most likely keep trying to get my usb key to boot just because it's a fun project... I think my wife suspects I've been d/ling porn all the time I'm spending on this.. oh well, ..

Tydalforce - you're right, I forgot that the cd version of MSFTools 2.0 has a floppy image on it.. I'll see if I can get that to work from the usb key.. good idea..