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Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost (Read 30730 times)
Dan Goodell
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Re: Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost
Reply #15 - Aug 26th, 2010 at 4:34pm
 
darkwalk1980 wrote on Aug 26th, 2010 at 10:03am:
What do you mean by DOS partition vs dedicated partition? I have mine installed on a 1Gb extended partition formatted to fat32. Is this the same as what you have? 

Your reply #5 mentioned you installed XOSL on a dedicated partition.  Are you able to use that 1GB partition to install other applications and run them from there?  My understanding is that the "dedicated partition" option means the partition will be solely dedicated to running XOSL and nothing else.  IOW, you couldn't also boot it like a normal DOS, linux or WinPE partition.

FWIW, if my understanding is correct, then you're also wasting a lot of space by dedicating 1GB to XOSL.  It only needs about 8MB or so.  (I also thought the "dedicated" alternative used its own "format", so it wasn't relevant whether you formatted the partition ahead of time.  You said you pre-formatted it FAT32... do you know if it's still FAT32?)

I use the alternative to "Install on a dedicated partition", which is "Install on a DOS drive".  Instead of committing one partition to XOSL and another to DOS, XOSL and DOS are installed in the same partition.  If you install DOS and make the partition bootable prior to installing XOSL, then after installing XOSL you can still add the DOS partition as one of your boot items in XOSL.  That way, the one partition does double-duty for XOSL and also as a boot environment from which to run Ghost, Partition Magic, and a number of other DOS-based utilities.

Having the XOSL installation files copied to the DOS partition also makes it convenient when you need to reinstall XOSL.  As you probably know, subsequently installing Windows will overwrite the XOSL MBR.  When that happens, I change the active partition back to the DOS partition, the hard drive reboots into DOS, and from there I rerun the XOSL installation process.

 
 
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Brian
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Re: Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost
Reply #16 - Aug 26th, 2010 at 5:16pm
 
Thank you both for getting me started. I had some spare time and here are my results.

I formatted the FAT 16 partition in BING and tried 4h, 6h and Eh. If the partition was less than 32 MB, XOSL would install but wouldn't boot. I'd just saw a flashing cursor.

I had no problems using a 32 MB partition. XOSL booted.

I then tried a primary partition and later a logical volume of 32 MB that weren't bootable. 6h FAT 16. I booted from a DOS CD and ran "install" from there. Used the "Install to a DOS drive" choice and XOSL installed and booted. But as Dan mentioned this partition is dedicated solely to XOSL.

Just some observations.

 
 
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darkwalk1980
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Re: Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost
Reply #17 - Aug 26th, 2010 at 5:38pm
 
It didn't occur to me to put XOSL and dos together. Thanks for the tip!
 
 
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Brian
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Re: Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost
Reply #18 - Aug 26th, 2010 at 10:08pm
 
Another observation. XOSL installs and boots in an 8 MB DOS partition if you use "Install on a dedicated partition". It won't work with an 8 MB partition if you "Install to DOS drive". The 8 MB partition was originally bootable (FreeDOS) but after this method FreeDOS is no longer available as the partition has been changed to Type 78h.

Dan's method is the most flexible.
 
 
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Re: Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost
Reply #19 - Aug 26th, 2010 at 11:48pm
 
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Dan Goodell
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Re: Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost
Reply #20 - Aug 26th, 2010 at 11:53pm
 
Brian wrote on Aug 26th, 2010 at 10:08pm:
XOSL installs and boots in an 8 MB DOS partition if you use "Install on a dedicated partition". It won't work with an 8 MB partition if you "Install to DOS drive". The 8 MB partition was originally bootable (FreeDOS) but after this method FreeDOS is no longer available as the partition has been changed to Type 78h.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get across when I said XOSL used its own proprietary format if you opted for a dedicated partition--and why I asked if darkwalk1980 had checked whether his pre-formatted 1 GB partition was still FAT32.  I would think it might have gotten changed to Type 78h.

 
 
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Re: Homebrew restore partition, freeDos, and ghost
Reply #21 - Aug 28th, 2010 at 6:02pm
 
I like XOSL. I now understand how to install it quickly and make it work. But even faster, I've imaged the DOS/XOSL partition and I can restore the image (along with the MBR) to the same or a different computer and it is ready to go.

Enough time saved to have a beer.
 
 
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