It is again the start of a new semester. We need to prepare the laboratory computers for students use. We do this by creating a source disk and doing a disk-copy to the other computers. This approach works because computers in a laboratory have similar specifications.
Last weekend, I run into the problem of making a USB disk DOS-bootable for use in copying hard disks. I needed to create one because the floppy drives in the laboratory computers are not working. The Norton Ghost program needs to run in DOS. The following are the steps I followed to make the disk.
Last weekend, I run into the problem of making a USB disk DOS-bootable for use in copying hard disks. I needed to create one because the floppy drives in the laboratory computers are not working. The Norton Ghost program needs to run in DOS. The following are the steps I followed to make the disk.
- Downloaded a FreeDOS disk image from http://www.finnix.org/Balder.
- Installed Qemu.
$sudo apt-get install qemu - Prepared the USB disk by creating a single FAT16 partition. In my Ubuntu box, my USB disk is
/dev/sdb.
$sudo gparted /dev/sdb
- Ran Qemu using the FreeDOS image for the first floppy(A:) and the USB disk as the second floppy (B:).
- From within FreeDOS, I formatted drive B: and made it bootable.
A:\>format /s b:
- Tested if the USB disk is now bootable.
$qemu -fda /dev/sdb
- Copied the Norton Ghost program to the USB disk.
$qemu -fda balder10.img -fdb /dev/sdb
