Topic: Best Partitioning software? And opinions on FreeDOS (Read 7378 times)

12AX7 · « **on:** December 01, 2008, 09:57:46 AM »

Who has the most trustworthy partitioning software? I need to partition drives that have an active OS (XPPro currently). I dont need a lot of bells and whistles; just dependability knowing my stuff will still be there and operating.

Also, I went looking for a copy of DOS6 and found an OS called FreeDOS that claims to be roughly the same thing as DOS6. . . has anyone any experience with this?

Joe Sixpack · « **Reply #1 on:** December 01, 2008, 10:26:42 AM »

PartitionMagic is what everyone I know used when they had to do that. The most awesome partitioning tool I ever used was gdisk, that came with ghost as I recall, but I don't know if it could do the nondestructive thing. If you're using Lun1X then whatever tool it has seems to do it automagically.

FreeDOS will probably do most of the things you could possibly want DOS for. If you just want to run an old game or something, try DOSbox. It's a DOS emulator and has worked really well for me the times I've used it. That was years ago so I'm sure it's better now.

Demosthenes · « **Reply #2 on:** December 01, 2008, 02:35:22 PM »

I've had pretty good luck in the past with QtParted.

12AX7 · « **Reply #3 on:** December 01, 2008, 06:39:39 PM »

Cool, thanks, fellas.

What I'm wanting to do is be able to have the machine running without Windows having anything to do with it; with some OS that I can see and manipulate Windows files. I just finished operations removing the Vondo trojan (virtumonde) from a completely clean (well...apparently not) machine. I've no clue how it got on here - seriously- because I havent installed aything except XPPro and Firefox at the time it showed up. I must have hit a malicious page or something; I dont click on shit unless I know exactly where it goes and what it does.
Anyway, it was rather a bitch to remove as it uses a handful of random 8 character named DLLs which are hidden, and if you dont get the one that's active it recreates the registry entries and a new handful of DLLs; basically returning you to back to square one.
What made it tedious to get rid of is it associates the DLL with either RUNDLL32 , or WINLOGON, so as soon as you have access to your Windows OS; you cant get to the active DLL. I had to find and rename them with no extension; boot to safe mode and delete em; then boot normally and see if I killed the right one. After about six times, I got em all.
All the renaming, booting to safe mode, deleting, rebooting regular, etc... man FUCK all that. I want DOS (Linux, but I dont know it well enough yet; and what I was using (Ubuntu) wouldn't show my Windows files. Maybe there's a setting to show them in there somewhere, but I havent found it yet). I already know DOS and know how to effectively use it, and I have a little 4 gig Maxtor drive Im not usening for nothinning. I wanted to install DOS on that drive as a tool to fix crap like that trojan. Just boot to DOS and kill the bitch. Done.
I've tried making/using boot floppies; but they work great until you need them; then they wont read. I actually made a good WIN98 Boot floppy and copied it to a WHOLE PACK of diskettes. Wanna know how many I found that would run? Or is me deciding to install a 20 year old OS on a HARD DRIVE answer enough?

Thanks again dudes.

ivan · « **Reply #4 on:** December 01, 2008, 06:53:18 PM »

Instead of boot flopies, you can try burning a boot CD. I've never done it, but it sounds feasible.

If you want to use a DOS drive to look at Windows partitions, be sure you have a nice NTFS reader. Unless you keep your Windows partitions FAT.

12AX7 · « **Reply #5 on:** December 01, 2008, 06:55:10 PM »

Erm.. sorta forgot to mention that since I found this little HDD; I no longer need patitioning software. At the time of my first post, I was going to install DOS on the same drive as Windows, but since I found this drive, Im just gonna use it.

12AX7 · « **Reply #6 on:** December 01, 2008, 06:58:03 PM »

Quote from: ivan on December 01, 2008, 06:53:18 PM

Instead of boot flopies, you can try burning a boot CD. I've never done it, but it sounds feasible.

I've never tried it either for the simple reason that I have THE ABSOLUTE WORST luck with CDs you have ever heard of someone have. I cant explain further; only that they really hate me.

Quote from: ivan on December 01, 2008, 06:53:18 PM

If you want to use a DOS drive to look at Windows partitions, be sure you have a nice NTFS reader. Unless you keep your Windows partitions FAT.

GREAT point!! I hadn't even thought about that. Thank you much for pointing that out.

12AX7 · « **Reply #7 on:** December 01, 2008, 07:21:24 PM »

Im gonna try to burn this: http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm
( the boot CD )
I'll let ya know how it turns out.

Joe Sixpack · « **Reply #8 on:** December 01, 2008, 07:42:24 PM »

bootdisk.com actually has craploads of useful, uh, bootdisks. Including bootable cds, if you're not comfortable making them yourself.

12AX7 · « **Reply #9 on:** December 02, 2008, 01:47:46 AM »

GODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNIT

I FUCKING *KNEW* IT.

Did I not say "I have the worst luck with CDs..."

GODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNIT

I downloaded the bootable CD iso from the above link (NTFS.com)
Really a so simple operation a fucking INFANT could do it.
Unzip the archive, and included in the download is ISO-burner.exe
Wow. How thoughtful of them! I pop a CD-R in the drive; click on iso-burner, it already knows where the iso is; I click "BURN!" . . .
"ISO IMAGE HAS BURNED SUCCESSFULLY!!"

- normally at this point, I would 'w00t!' once or twice; but this is a CD - and Ive told you how we get along. I'm far too suspicious to 'woot!' anymore.
I open Windows Explorer to look at my CD and ...

NOTHING
NADA
NICHT

W_H_A_T T_H_E F_U_C_K?

I knew it, I says to myself. What, did you think somehow for some reason that THIS time a CD would burn and then run ok??

I seriously dont get it. MY FUCKING MOTHER burns CDs. My little cousins, nieces and various other little kids burn CDs all the fucking time. So WHAT in the FCUK is wrong with MY clicking finger?

Just to be sure; I tried to boot up using the cd... It gets as far as

BOOT FROM CD:_

and thats it. So apparently there's something on the CD stopping the BIOS from booting from the HDD, but not enough to make it boot from the CD.

GODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNITGODDAMNIT

I FUCKING HATE ME SOME GODDAMN CDS!

ivan · « **Reply #10 on:** December 02, 2008, 11:42:07 AM »

Jesus Christ!

Must be some kind of CD curse.

kanca mosan · « **Reply #11 on:** December 02, 2008, 12:17:18 PM »

http://www.nervous.co.uk/shindex.htm?http://www.nervous.co.uk/reviews/nercd063.htm

12AX7 · « **Reply #12 on:** December 02, 2008, 02:40:23 PM »

Quote from: ivan on December 02, 2008, 11:42:07 AM

Jesus Christ!

Must be some kind of CD curse.

I coastered four fricken CDs doing the above. I have figured out that one of my drives is an oddball, apparently. Its an Asus, and it will burn fine; just not when you want it to. Then when it burns, it might read in this drive; if not, maybe it'll read in one of the other drives on another machine. Yep! But I need to install on the first one... So if I burn it on one of the other drives in the other machine; it reads just fine there; but doesnt read in the Asus.
See what I was getting at? I fucking HAYTE me some CDs.

12AX7 · « **Reply #13 on:** December 02, 2008, 02:47:43 PM »

Oh - and before you say "Well, obviously it's the Asus"; keep in mind it has been like this before I even bought the Asus six years ago. In fact; I bought this Asus because I couldnt get the first two drives to read/burn back and forth. One was an Iomega...I 've no clue what the other one was. Anyway; same story there; so I got the Asus, and it was the godsend.
Now Im using two entirely different machines and have the Asus installed in one of those. Each has two burner drives. And the song remains the same. I dont get it; and try to stay the hell away from creating anything BUT music CDs. (Those I *never* have a problem)

Demosthenes · « **Reply #14 on:** December 02, 2008, 02:50:29 PM »

I feel your pain. I don't know what it is, but I've always had the worst luck when it comes to burning CDs.

12AX7 · « **Reply #15 on:** December 02, 2008, 03:08:48 PM »

Is there an NTFS reader in Linux? (Im sure there is...) I guess it's actually time to buckle down and learn a flavor. I've been picking at it with Ubuntu; I suppose I'll start taking it more seriously.

Demosthenes · « **Reply #16 on:** December 02, 2008, 03:17:31 PM »

Reader, yes. Writer.... technically yes. But not reliable. And not for free.

RelandR · « **Reply #17 on:** December 02, 2008, 08:24:33 PM »

I had the same sort of 'luck' with iso->cd and then discovered this lil' tutorial jewel and just used the linux box for such tasks (never accomplished in win)

If you manage to squeeze your Win partition sufficiently to allow for a 'nix install you may also want to partition a fat section for files only and then read and write from either os.

12AX7 · « **Reply #18 on:** December 02, 2008, 08:36:22 PM »

Quote from: RelandR on December 02, 2008, 08:24:33 PM

I had the same sort of 'luck' with iso->cd and then discovered this lil' tutorial jewel

Sweet. Thanks, man. Looks like it has the info I need. Nice to know it isn't my crooked old finger, lol.

12AX7 · « **Reply #19 on:** December 05, 2008, 12:46:43 PM »

Ok. In case anyone was wondering, "Well... what happened next?"

To make a long story short, I had to trash one of my DVDRWVDWD-40RVDVDRW drives. It was ruining the discs; physically. Pop in a brand-new disc and it comes out with a huge section scratched so bad it's ruined. You could hear it in there eating the disc...
I took that drive out and opened it up first to see what was the problem; but the way that thing was constructed, even if I'd have seen the problem I couldn't have gotten to it to fix it. I guess they don't really need to allow for any later maintenance on such devices; if it breaks, toss it. I have another old pc hull (case with mobo/cpu, some drives, cables, spare parts) that I took an old CD-ROM drive from and used it. I then burned new discs from the other machine, and LO! they would read in the CD-ROM. So I began to install FreeDOS on my extra 4Gig Maxtor drive. I make it thru all of the installs, get to a black screen, and it hangs with an interrupt
(Interrupt divide by zero, stack XXaddress) ). So no FreeDOS for me. So, fuck it. Im jest goan 'stall Win2K on the little 4G, and I'll use it if I have to get to any XP files that have to be inactive. Waste of a good 4G drive, but whatever. I can use the rest of the room for a file vault or something. I don't want to get into partitioning if I can help it; and I'll most likely be getting another (more) drive(s) soon, so this is fine for now.
Thanks for everybody's input.

ivan · « **Reply #20 on:** December 05, 2008, 12:49:50 PM »

God, I hate computers.

12AX7 · « **Reply #21 on:** December 05, 2008, 12:55:23 PM »

I don't think God reads this forum, dudesman.

ivan · « **Reply #22 on:** December 05, 2008, 01:14:15 PM »

Ya, He's over in /b/.

Skananabittles · « **Reply #23 on:** December 06, 2008, 05:54:46 PM »

12AX7 · « **Reply #24 on:** December 06, 2008, 09:43:14 PM »

Nah, it's not the DVD's, CD-R's, and OS's; it's the CD's, TV's, and TS's that supposedly God has a problem with.

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Author Topic: Best Partitioning software? And opinions on FreeDOS (Read 7378 times)

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