Has anyone gotten Sun's VirtualBox to do more than boot from

Post by Myron A. Calhoun
I have a real DOS machine but would like to "combine" it with my Windoze
XP Home machine. I've installed Sun's VirtualBox and it will boot
command.com from a floppy disk, but it cannot "see" any hard drive.
Has anyone gotten any farther with VirtualBox?

Have you run fdisk off of the floppy to partition the virtual hard
drive? Did you set up a virtual hard drive in VirtualBox?

DOS Guy

2009-10-25 19:46:56 UTC

Post by Myron A. Calhoun
I have a real DOS machine but would like to "combine" it with
my Windoze XP Home machine.

Why don't you keep your machine's hard drive formatted as 100% FAT-32
and simply install XP-home on a FAT-32 volume (even the C:\ volume).

XP pro runs fine on FAT-32 (I do it all the time). I think NTFS is for
the birds (when you dig down, there are more downsides to NTFS vs FAT32
and very little benefit).

About a year ago I did exactly what you're looking for - I formatted a
blank 40 gb drive as a single FAT-32 volume, installed DOS 7 on it, and
then installed XP-pro on it. During startup, I get a choice to boot
into DOS or XP. No special boot-handlers needed.

And it's a breath of fresh air to be able to browse your XP's file
system from a pure DOS environment.

E. S. Fabian

2009-10-25 20:45:51 UTC

DOS Guy wrote:
| XP pro runs fine on FAT-32 (I do it all the time). I think NTFS is
| for the birds (when you dig down, there are more downsides to NTFS
| vs FAT32 and very little benefit).

I am not aware of any downside to NTFS, other than the lack of reliable
drivers for DOS and older Windows. OTOH I have been using the following NTFS
features available in WinXP for years:

1/ symbolic links (technically, junctions) - they provide access to a
subdirectory via multiple paths on the same drive, so collections of files
on a subtopic used by multiple main topics can be accessed from each main
topic as if it were local. It also makes access to any one of multiple
versions of a program easier. Note that in Vista and later versions of
Windows the symbolic links can cross drive boundaries. This allows you to
add a new drive, move some of your subdirectories to it, and create a
symbolic link on the original drive to the new subdirectories, and all your
programs will behave as if never moved them.

2/ hard links - they allow files to have multiple names. In the *nix world
grep, egrep and fgrep are a typical example - the interpretation of the
command line is vastly different based on which name you used to run the
program. I have many .BTM files where the invocation name substitutes for
option specifications. When you use multiple versions of a program suite,
for each file that is identical between the versions, hard links allow you
to use catalog those files in every version directory, but use diskspace
only for one.

Both of the above usages of NTFS features conserve diskspace, and improve
file maintenance. Two other NTFS features I have not yet used, because I did
not need (#3) or it is only available in XP Pro, which I just recently
acquired (#4):

3/ compressed files
4/ encrypted files

I am about to convert one or both of my pocket drives to NTFS to increase
capacity, using methods 1, 2 and 3; I intend to put encrypt all my personal
information (4).

--
Steve

Calvin

2009-10-26 01:50:13 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
XP pro runs fine on FAT-32 (I do it all the time). I think NTFS is for
the birds (when you dig down, there are more downsides to NTFS vs FAT32
and very little benefit).

FAT-32 is a plain BAD idea. It took the already fragile FAT-16 file
system and made it ten times WORSE !

NTFS is a proper full journaling file system designed for file safety,
and in the event of hardware failure or malfunction, enhanced file
recoverability.

Calvin.

http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au

DOS Guy

2009-10-26 03:12:39 UTC

Post by Calvin

Post by DOS Guy
XP pro runs fine on FAT-32 (I do it all the time). I think NTFS
is for the birds (when you dig down, there are more downsides to
NTFS vs FAT32 and very little benefit).

FAT-32 is a plain BAD idea. It took the already fragile FAT-16
file system and made it ten times WORSE !

Fabian wrote that NTFS allows for hard and symbolic links - I know of
nobody that uses them (I'm not even sure how to make them without using
third-party application software). Compressed files are unnecessary -
and have been for years given the rate of increase in the size of hard
drives. Encrypted files are also rarely used by most people.

Post by Calvin
NTFS is a proper full journaling file system designed for file
safety, and in the event of hardware failure or malfunction,
enhanced file recoverability.

You've got to understand the original purpose of NTFS back when it was
designed in the early 1990's.

Hard drives were less reliable than they would be by the early 2000's.
They did not have automatic bad-sector remapping, or in-drive caching.
Journaling in NTFS was designed to overcome the pathetic fault-tolerance
and failure rates of the hard drives of that age.

NTFS was initially going to find it's way onto servers, where I agree
that multi-threaded apps and general file-level coherency was going to
be important (and where files were more likely to cross the 4gb
threshold).

A lot of people have a misconception of journaling. If there is an
interruption or hardware failure that causes the system to shut down
(not just a failure that occurrs during a write operation), your file
system is returned to the same state it had before the interruption.
New data that existed during the interruption that was being written
will be lost. NTFS sacrifices orphaned data at the expense of
maintaining a "clean" cluster allocation. FAT32 can't
roll-back incomplete transactions, so data that was being written can be
recovered, but it comes because of the unintended creation of lost
clusters or chains which can lead to a "messy" cluster allocation but
rarely (if ever) a disfunctional file system.

The primary feature of NTFS is, by design, that you can't gain
file-system access without booting the GUI and logging into the system
(or at least that's how Microsoft deployed it). I don't particularly
care for that, given that I work in a home and soho environment.

If you want to read a very good comparative explanation about NTFS vs
FAT32, I suggest you read this:

http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2006/01/bad-file-system-or-incompetent-os.html

His summary:

--------------------
I would use NTFS where:

* Users have professional-grade IT admin, including backup
* Users need to hide data more than they need to salvage it
* Applications require files over 4G in size
* Hard drive exceeds the 137G barrier
--------------------

Item 3 is arguably rarely encountered.

Item 4 is patently false in all cases for the current revision level for
2K and XP, and can be false for win-98 given the correct hardware or
drivers.

But I fully agree with this:

"..I would avoid the use of NTFS in consumer PCs."

On a performance level, because NTFS is so "busy" doing it's journaling
and house-keeping, it takes a performance hit. There is no question
about this. Given the same hardware and (most) of the same tasks, FAT32
will outperform NTFS. Certainly on a single user home or SOHO
situation. Multi-user server applications are a different story. But
in that case, you're more likely to need NTFS's permission-based access
controls anyways.

It can also be argued that NTFS exposes the file system to more
vulnerability because of it's extra house-keeping activities. People
don't notice the consequences of that vulnerability because NTFS knows
how to clean up after itself.

Most IT people see every .chk file on a FAT32 drive as an example of
each time that FAT32 has "let the user down", without knowing what those
files really represent (rarely does it represent a munged file for which
it was the only or the best copy).

He goes into some detail to describe the consequences of having to
rebuild a file system under both NTFS and FAT32 - I hope you read them.
The take home message is that you have a better chance of rebuilding a
file system after a catastrophe if it's FAT vs NTFS. As well, NTFS
certainly doesn't do away with the concept of file fragmentation (a
drive can become quite frag'd under NTFS too).

Sure, FAT32 can be more "sloppy", maybe more often than we'd like.
Blame the OS, or faulty apps or hardware for that. But even if you
don't clean it as often as you should, sloppy rarely or never equates to
disfunctional. At least FAT32 knows when it should (or must) run
scandisk during startup - but NTFS will also throw up that requirement
in certain situations.

FAT32 also gets a bad rap because Microsoft chose to increase cluster
size along with volume size, which is completely unnecessary.

I've formatted up to 500 gb FAT32 volumes using 4kb cluster size and
installed both Win-98 and XP on such volumes (!). Win-98 functions
pretty well given that configuration - aside from the fact that defrag
and scandskw can't deal with so many clusters (but DOS checkdsk can).

Jim Leonard

2009-10-26 12:38:58 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
Hard drives were less reliable than they would be by the early 2000's.
They did not have automatic bad-sector remapping, or in-drive caching.
Journaling in NTFS was designed to overcome the pathetic fault-tolerance
and failure rates of the hard drives of that age.

That's completely incorrect. A journaling filesystem does nothing at
all to prevent against faulty drive hardware; it prevents against
corruption caused by incomplete writes, ie. a power outage.

As for the rest of your summary, it essentially tries to justify your
position by stating that "because those are features I'd never use,
NTFS is worthless". Having had to deal with many unexpected outages
AT HOME, despite having both a household UPS and individual UPSes, I
hold data integrity very highly and obviously use journaling
filesystems. (I also keep at least two full backups, but that's
outside of the scope of this conversation.)

Post by DOS Guy
A lot of people have a misconception of journaling. If there is an
interruption or hardware failure that causes the system to shut down
(not just a failure that occurrs during a write operation), your file
system is returned to the same state it had before the interruption.
New data that existed during the interruption that was being written
will be lost. NTFS sacrifices orphaned data at the expense of
maintaining a "clean" cluster allocation. FAT32 can't
roll-back incomplete transactions, so data that was being written can be
recovered, but it comes because of the unintended creation of lost
clusters or chains which can lead to a "messy" cluster allocation but
rarely (if ever) a disfunctional file system.

You write the above like it's a bad thing incomplete transactions are
discarded. You would rather keep them? Being incomplete, their
integrity is unverifiable.

FAT32 is not a copy-on-write filesystem, so lost cluster chains are
*bad*, not good.

Post by DOS Guy
He goes into some detail to describe the consequences of having to
rebuild a file system under both NTFS and FAT32 - I hope you read them.

That's a moot argument -- one should always have backups. I've lost
data on nearly every type of filesystem and media, so while I love
sophisticated filesystems (NOT NTFS -- more like XFS or ZFS), I am not
naive to trust them.

Lest you think me a windows-lover, I run a wide variety of OSes and
machines at home, including very many DOS machines for my hobby. To
the OP, I would recommend having a FAT16 bootable DOS partition, then
his XP NTFS partition on the same drive. I ran like that for many
years and could read/write the DOS files while in Windows, and could
boot to DOS when I wanted to run something that I couldn't run inside
windows or DOSBOX.

Rugxulo

2009-10-26 14:51:52 UTC

Hi,

Post by DOS Guy
Fabian wrote that NTFS allows for hard and symbolic links - I know of
nobody that uses them (I'm not even sure how to make them without using
third-party application software).

Vista (and presumably Win7, which I haven't tried) has MKLINK, but I
don't think Linux's NTFS driver handles those, so you have to use the
original path. The weird thing about symlinks is that DOS apps can
access the original files through them, but their size in a dir
listing shows up as zero.

Post by Calvin
NTFS is a proper full journaling file system designed for file
safety, and in the event of hardware failure or malfunction,
enhanced file recoverability.

You've got to understand the original purpose of NTFS back when it was
designed in the early 1990's.

Wasn't NTFS more of a successor to HPFS, which itself was an alleged
huge improvement over FAT?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPFS

Post by DOS Guy
NTFS was initially going to find it's way onto servers, where I agree
that multi-threaded apps and general file-level coherency was going to
be important (and where files were more likely to cross the 4gb
threshold).

The overhead of NTFS is allegedly quite high compared to FAT, hence
why MS whipped up exFAT for intended use on flash drives.

Post by DOS Guy
The primary feature of NTFS is, by design, that you can't gain
file-system access without booting the GUI and logging into the system
(or at least that's how Microsoft deployed it). I don't particularly
care for that, given that I work in a home and soho environment.

To MS, cmdline and TUI are and have always been obsolete, so they shun
that as much as possible. Plus, let's face it, most people hate
"arcane" DOS and it's alleged troubles. It's up for debate whether
they're the crazy ones or we are. :-)

Post by DOS Guy
* Applications require files over 4G in size
* Hard drive exceeds the 137G barrier

Well, obviously the OS dictates what you can use, and even NTFS has
various subversions available (I think Vista is 5, but don't quote me
on that). So you're unlikely to be able to use NTFS (or ext2 or HPFS)
natively on any DOS. While there are 3rd-party tools, most (all?)
aren't quite good enough. So you can't choose a file system on its own
merits, you have to use what is supported. I know you know this, just
saying ... it's less ideal than it could be. For instance, Vista won't
boot off a FAT partition while XP will. Oh, and don't forget that XP
etc. can access (?) but refuse to create > 32 GB FAT32 partitions "for
speed reasons".

EDR-DOS tried to invent an extension called FAT+ for > 4 GB files, and
I think Udo collaborated with some FreeDOS folks on a rough spec, but
they never implemented it (too few volunteers). Even FreeDOS' FAT32 is
still 2 GB limited per individual file.

Post by DOS Guy
"..I would avoid the use of NTFS in consumer PCs."
On a performance level, because NTFS is so "busy" doing it's journaling
and house-keeping, it takes a performance hit. There is no question
about this. Given the same hardware and (most) of the same tasks, FAT32
will outperform NTFS.

Win95 could run (barely) on 4 MB of RAM, I think, but NT always needed
at least 16 MB or so. So yeah, there was a tradeoff. And we all know
that NTVDM isn't nearly as good at DOS emulation, but it's more stable
overall (probably due to better .DLL hell protection).

Post by DOS Guy
As well, NTFS certainly doesn't do away with the concept of file fragmentation
(a drive can become quite frag'd under NTFS too).

I think Vista regularly defragments in the background once every week
for me.

Post by DOS Guy
FAT32 also gets a bad rap because Microsoft chose to increase cluster
size along with volume size, which is completely unnecessary.
I've formatted up to 500 gb FAT32 volumes using 4kb cluster size and
installed both Win-98 and XP on such volumes (!). Win-98 functions
pretty well given that configuration - aside from the fact that defrag
and scandskw can't deal with so many clusters (but DOS checkdsk can).

Yes, that's a problem. Of course, the main issue for us is that no DOS
natively accesses NTFS, no FAT partitions exist on most installs by
default, no easy way to resize NTFS (until Vista), and you can only
convert one way: FAT to NTFS. In other words, it's their way or the
highway.

Ross Ridge

2009-10-26 19:11:26 UTC

Post by Rugxulo
The overhead of NTFS is allegedly quite high compared to FAT, hence
why MS whipped up exFAT for intended use on flash drives.

And why Microsoft also uses FAT derived filesystems on their Xbox
consoles.

Ross Ridge

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] ***@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //

E. S. Fabian

2009-10-26 20:22:51 UTC

Ross Ridge wrote:
| Rugxulo <***@gmail.com> wrote:
|| The overhead of NTFS is allegedly quite high compared to FAT, hence
|| why MS whipped up exFAT for intended use on flash drives.
|
| And why Microsoft also uses FAT derived filesystems on their Xbox
| consoles.

For a game, speed is everything. For a system used for important or critical
information, dependability is much more important. I'll stick with NTFS.
However, as I am about to reformat one of my drives, I may create a DOS
partition, so I can run some of my old DOS programs better.
<><
Steve

DOS Guy

2009-10-27 01:17:19 UTC

For a system used for important or critical information,
dependability is much more important.

I think recoverability is more important. FAT32 is a more recoverable
file system. NTFS is harder to reconstruct given a certain (and not
necessarily high) amount of dammange is done to it (and more expensive
to reconstruct / repair).

Both file systems are dependable.

In fact, given the succeptibility for win-9x/me to behave in an unstable
manner in some circumstances, FAT32 functions very well and has shown me
that is can recover itself with basically zero lost files the vast
majority of the time.

I also think accessibility is important. A fat32 volume is more
accessible, from more platforms, under more conditions (user rights /
permissions, hidden files, directories and other such games) vs ntfs.

I think simplicity is important. FAT32 is a simple file system.
Microsoft has shown that it's unofficial motto - "If it works, it's not
complicated enough" to be a ridiculous and costly philosophy.

I equate simplicity with dependability.

NTFS is more suitable as a file-server or for handling large database
files - but that is a choice made from a practicality or performance
(not dependability) POV.

If you want dependability, choose your hard drive manufacturer
carefully, as well as the motherboard and power supply of your system.

bruce

2009-10-27 22:45:02 UTC

For a system used for important or critical information,
dependability is much more important.

And I thought I had a dependable file system because it was
journaled. I've just recovered from a munged disk by reformatting and
reinstalling the OS! No power failure or HW problem, just filled it
too full at 95%.

Just my 2 cents.

Jim Leonard

2009-10-28 16:47:47 UTC

This makes no sense. It is much harder to damage an NTFS filesystem
due to the fact it journals, so there is less need to recover in the
first place.

It sounds like you'd rather drive a car that breaks down every weekend
as long as it's easy to fix roadside. Me, I'd rather drive a car that
breaks down only once a year, regardless of how badly it breaks down.

I also think accessibility is important. A fat32 volume is more
accessible, from more platforms, under more conditions (user rights /
permissions, hidden files, directories and other such games) vs ntfs.

Because there are NO user rights, permissions, etc. So yeah, it does
a lot less, so of course it's easy to read.

I think simplicity is important. FAT32 is a simple file system.

Simple is not always best. There is a right tool for every job; FAT32
is the right tool for some jobs but it is not the right tool for every
job.

DOS Guy

2009-10-29 01:33:32 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
I think recoverability is more important. FAT32 is a more
recoverable file system.

This makes no sense. It is much harder to damage an NTFS filesystem
due to the fact it journals, so there is less need to recover in the
first place.

Read this:

http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2008/03/ntfs-vs-fatxx-data-recovery.html

And then tell me what your response is.

The summary of that material is:

-----------
Given the poor results I see when recovering data from NTFS, I'd have to
recommend using FATxx rather than NTFS as a data survivability
strategy. If readers can attain better results with other recovery
tools for NTFS, then please describe your mileage with these in the
comments section!
-----------

Post by Jim Leonard
It sounds like you'd rather drive a car that breaks down every
weekend as long as it's easy to fix roadside.

No.

I'd rather drive a car that even if it breaks as often as another car,
it will rarely break as badly, or as expensively, as the other car.

Post by Jim Leonard
Me, I'd rather drive a car that breaks down only once a year,
regardless of how badly it breaks down.

Unlike most IT-centric people who migrated away from Win-9x the moment
that win-2k came out, I continued to run win-9x on dozens of PC's during
the past 10 years, and I've seen the huge improvements in performance
and stability that came with better hardware, more system memory, better
motherboards and video cards, and better drivers for win-9x towards the
end of it's commercial life (circa 2006).

Those that left win-98 back in 2000 or 2001 have only bad memories of an
OS trying to run on 16 or 32 mb of memory with buggy AGP video drivers
that left their system hanging and resulted in many scandisk sessions
and .chk files.

I have never lost data on a FAT-32 drive due to logical file-table
errors that could not be fixed or repaired. For the past 5 years I
really haven't had to run scandisk on any win-98 system - period.

And yes, it would matter more to me how badly a file system could break
vs how often it does break, because eventually you will encounter the
"bad" break when you can least afford it and possibly not be able to
recover from it.

Post by DOS Guy
I also think accessibility is important. (user rights /
permissions, hidden files, directories and other such
games)

Because there are NO user rights, permissions, etc.
So yeah, it does a lot less, so of course it's easy
to read.

It does exactly what it's supposed to do - which is to store files and
not play games with me, the system user and owner. User permissions,
rights, etc, have no place on a consumer desktop or laptop PC.

The concept is absurd, always has been, but Micro$haft had no choice
when they took their corporate / institutional / gov't -certified OS (NT
and it's derivatives) and shoved it down consumer's throats. And it did
consumers absolutely zero good having those "features" when their
machines got hacked and became spam zombies during 2003 - 2006.

Post by Jim Leonard
Simple is not always best. There is a right tool for every
job; FAT32 is the right tool for some jobs but it is not
the right tool for every job.

FAT32 is not a tool. It's a specification.

FAT32 is no more a tool than my tool-drawer in my tool-chest is a tool.

Jim Leonard

2009-10-29 18:28:44 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2008/03/ntfs-vs-fatxx-data-recovery.html
And then tell me what your response is.

His personal observations don't factor into the conversation. Both he
and you are focusing on a tiny tiny part of a filesystem -- under
normal circumstances, *the part you see the least*. I have backups
for when a filesystem fails, so that I don't have to dick around with
the "what did or didn't get corrupted" guessing game.

If your needs never grow beyond 4G file limits, compression,
encryption, or security, then stick with FAT32. Just don't recommend
it as the best filesystem for all needs.

Post by DOS Guy
And yes, it would matter more to me how badly a file system could break
vs how often it does break, because eventually you will encounter the
"bad" break when you can least afford it and possibly not be able to
recover from it.

That's what backups are for.

Post by DOS Guy
It does exactly what it's supposed to do - which is to store files and
not play games with me, the system user and owner. User permissions,
rights, etc, have no place on a consumer desktop or laptop PC.

Unless you share your machine with other members of the family.

DOS Guy

2009-10-31 00:07:45 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
And then tell me what your response is.

His personal observations don't factor into the conversation.

His experiences with NTFS are no different than anyone else's. NTFS
doesn't behave differently depending on who is using it.

It's just that he bothers to investigate the working details and pull
the cover off the charade that is NTFS.

Post by Jim Leonard
Both he and you are focusing on a tiny tiny part of a filesystem
-- under normal circumstances, *the part you see the least*.

And it's the very part that you NTFS supporters constantly point out as
the main advancement of NTFS over FAT32.

Post by Jim Leonard
I have backups for when a filesystem fails, so that I don't
have to dick around with the "what did or didn't get corrupted"
guessing game.

What a joke.

NTFS is supposed to be the superior file system, with fallbacks and
safeguards and extra complexity built-in.

You won't let me use the excuse that I can back up my FAT32 file system
as a fall-back to it's supposed problems, so why should I let you do the
same with NTFS?

Post by Jim Leonard
If your needs never grow beyond 4G file limits,

Many apps limit their user files to 4gb, even under XP, vista, etc.
Mailbox size for example.

Post by Jim Leonard
compression,

Who uses compression these days (or - this decade?)

Post by Jim Leonard
encryption,

Tell me that the FBI, NSA, CIA, DEA, etc, can't de-crypt your hard drive
when they come knocking at your door. Those gov't agencies were given
the back door into your encrypted files by Meekro$haft in exchange for
dropping the antitrust suit. Next time you return to the US and have to
get through immigration and customs, tell me how well they handle your
encrypted laptop when they take it away from you and send it to the boys
at Langley for analysis.

Post by Jim Leonard
or security,

Security. The most over-worked and over-used word in the english
language since 9/11.

If I want security, I'll buy a vault and put my PC in it. I don't need
the "security" that NTFS offers on my desktop system at home or at
work. That same security that malware seems so able to get around.

Post by Jim Leonard
then stick with FAT32. Just don't recommend it as the best
filesystem for all needs.

For student, home and SOHO situations, it is a better choice. For big
evil corporations and organizations that don't or can't trust their
employees to not use their CD-drive trays as coffee-cup holders, then
NTFS is for those goons.

Post by DOS Guy
And yes, it would matter more to me how badly a file system
could break vs how often it does break, because eventually
you will encounter the "bad" break

That's what backups are for.

Like I said above, backups are another layer that can be used with any
file system and play no role in the discussion of the pro's and con's of
one file system over another.

But it's still sad that you have to raise the topic of backups as a way
to explain-away the deficiencies and vulnerabilities of an NTFS drive
that goes south.

Post by DOS Guy
It does exactly what it's supposed to do - which is to store
files and not play games with me, the system user and owner.
User permissions, rights, etc, have no place on a consumer
desktop or laptop PC.

Unless you share your machine with other members of the family.

Hmmm.

I never considered that you might live in a third-world country, with
only one computer per household. Good point.

Jim Leonard

2009-11-02 15:38:13 UTC

Post by Jim Leonard
His personal observations don't factor into the conversation.

His experiences with NTFS are no different than anyone else's. NTFS
doesn't behave differently depending on who is using it.

They are different than mine, which invalidates them if that is your
only reference sample.

It's just that he bothers to investigate the working details and pull
the cover off the charade that is NTFS.

There's no charade to booting without any recovery needed from a power
loss, vs. *always* needing recovery from a power loss with FAT32.

Post by Jim Leonard
If your needs never grow beyond 4G file limits,

Many apps limit their user files to 4gb, even under XP, vista, etc.
Mailbox size for example.

Well, I hope you never need to work with video.

Post by Jim Leonard
compression,

Who uses compression these days (or - this decade?)

Just because you don't see a need for a feature doesn't mean that
feature isn't useful.

DOS Guy

2009-11-08 14:06:49 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
His experiences with NTFS are no different than anyone else's.
NTFS doesn't behave differently depending on who is using it.

They are different than mine, which invalidates them if that is
your only reference sample.

What kind of cracked logic is that?

Cquirke's examples are "invalidated" simply because they are different
than yours?

How about this: The car you drive is different than the car I drive.
Therefore I conclude that you don't drive a car. How's that logic?
It's the same as yours.

Post by DOS Guy
It's just that he bothers to investigate the working details
and pull the cover off the charade that is NTFS.

There's no charade to booting without any recovery needed fro
m a power loss, vs. *always* needing recovery from a power
loss with FAT32.

When was the last time, or how often do you run win-9x or XP from a
FAT32 volume?

I do it all the time, on about a dozen machines, for about, oh, the past
10 years. So I can tell you that the percentage of time that a FAT32
volume auto-runs scandisk at startup is about the same as an NT-based
system with NTFS does (which is very rarely).

Hey, I know that I have to do a hard or soft reset on my win-98 systems
when I bog them down with too many open apps. It's the rare time (less
than 5%) that scandisk auto-runs as a consequence.

And at least with FAT32 I can cancel scandisk if I want (with zero
consequences) but you're forced to let scandisk (or chkdisk I think it's
called in NT) run to completion.

Post by Jim Leonard
If your needs never grow beyond 4G file limits,

Well, I hope you never need to work with video.

I built an XP-pro system for a friend a couple years ago, using a pair
of 250 gb SATA drives. I formatted the drives with FAT32, using 4kb and
32kb cluster size (4kb for drive 1, and 32kb for drive 2). The OS and
apps are installed on drive 1. Drive 2 is used for large multimedia
files.

I torrented a bunch of Adobe Premiere CS3 video editing software and
installed it on the system. It had no problem with the FAT32 volumes
reading and writing and editing the various video files from a digital
video camera. I guess it knows to span the 4 gb file boundary if it
needs to.

The only place I see really large files (more than 4 gb) are for virtual
images. And not too many people run virtual sessions. And it might
even be the case that VM-ware and other virtual machine managers would
also span the 4gb file boundary if they needed to.

Post by Jim Leonard
compression,

Who uses compression these days (or - this decade?)

Just because you don't see a need for a feature doesn't mean
that feature isn't useful.

Do you use the NTFS file-compression feature? Do you know anyone that
does?

Klaus Meinhard

2009-11-08 21:45:41 UTC

Hallo DOS Guy et al. in this thread,

may I remind you that this thread is for 4DOS and its successors 4NT,
TCC and TCC/LE, powerfull command line interpreters by JP Software, not
general discussions about DOS topics.

If you want to continue this discussion, I'd recommand alt.msdos, where
you would find a greater audience which might take an interest.

--
Best Regards,

* Klaus Meinhard *
<www.4dos.info>

Ross Ridge

2009-10-27 23:06:41 UTC

Post by Ross Ridge
And why Microsoft also uses FAT derived filesystems on their Xbox
consoles.
For a game, speed is everything. For a system used for important or critical
information, dependability is much more important. I'll stick with NTFS.

Despite what has been said in this thread, NTFS is not a full journaling
filesystem, it only journals filesystem meta-data. It doesn't journal
your data, so your important or critical information doesn't get any
special protection. Even as far as integrity of the file system, they
end up being just as reliable. With NTFS, Windows is able to use the
journal to quickly restore filesystem integrity after a power failure,
while with FAT Windows has to do a perform a full file system check to
the same job. The net result ends up being the same. Both filesystems
are in consistant state after booting, and neither provides any guarantees
that your data remains consistant if you didn't shut down properly.

Now since doing a full filesystem check on a large FAT filesystem can
take a stupidly long time, that's reason enough for me to recommend
installing Windows XP to NTFS partition. You're also probably going to
find more and more software is going to assume NTFS.

Post by Ross Ridge
However, as I am about to reformat one of my drives, I may create a DOS
partition, so I can run some of my old DOS programs better.

I have a FAT16 boot partition, a FAT32 partition for games, and an NFTS
partition for Windows XP. It's possible to install Windows to a different
partition than the boot partition, so if the original poster wants to
the use boot menu to boot into MS-DOS and he can do so and still use NTFS.

Ross Ridge

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] ***@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //

Calvin

2009-10-28 01:05:15 UTC

Post by Ross Ridge
I have a FAT16 boot partition, a FAT32 partition for games, and an NFTS
partition for Windows XP. It's possible to install Windows to a different
partition than the boot partition, so if the original poster wants to
the use boot menu to boot into MS-DOS and he can do so and still use NTFS.

This is the method I recommend as well.

See http://nt4ref.zcm.com.au/bigdisk.htm for details.

Calvin.

DOS Guy

2009-10-28 13:43:58 UTC

Post by Ross Ridge
Despite what has been said in this thread, NTFS is not a full
journaling filesystem, it only journals filesystem meta-data.
It doesn't journal your data

Would IIS server log files be considered "meta-data", or "my data" ?

IIS log file data does become lost when an NT4 system is shut-down
unexpectedly (the log files are journalled back to their last
checkpoint).

Post by Ross Ridge
so your important or critical information doesn't get any special
protection.

Journalling doesn't "protect" user information contained in files.

Journalling maintains the coherency of files or file structure (metrics
such as file size, cluster composition, etc) - not the file-data that
they may have once contained.

Every time that journalling kicks in because of some system event or
malfunction, the result will either be inconsequential to your data (no
difference) or the result will be loss of user data.

Journalling will sacrifice the last data written to a file in order to
maintain what it thinks is the proper coherency of the file tables.

Journalling is a *active* process. It doesn't happen passively. You
could, in theory, impliment journalling in FAT32 by having the OS
impliment extra structures and constructs to contain file checkpoints,
semaphores and ghost copies.

The extra read and write operations that are performed in the name of
NTFS journalling do take a toll on hard drive operational lifespan, as
do ALL or ANY read / write operations. The goal of any file system that
operates on a magneto-optical-mechanical storage device should be to
minimize the mechanical operations of the device when performing a given
read or write task.

Similarly, NTFS is not recommended for flash memory drives because the
memory elements of those drives actually have a finite life span
(re-write-ability) and again NTFS is notorious for causing arguably an
unnecessary amount of those activities in the name of journalling.

Post by Ross Ridge
Now since doing a full filesystem check on a large FAT
filesystem can take a stupidly long time,

Only if you elect to perform a "surface" test (ie a check for bad
sectors) which is a legacy operation based on hard drives of 10+ years
ago that did not monitor themselves and automatically remap bad sectors
for good ones held in reserve areas.

On this system, I have a 32 gb FAT32 c: partition with 120k files in
7,300 directories. It takes about 7 minutes to perform a DOS scandisk
operation on it. I would not call that a stupidly long time.

Post by Ross Ridge
that's reason enough for me to recommend installing Windows
XP to NTFS partition.

I have seen XP take a pathetically long time (30+ minutes) to perform
it's version of chkdsk on 20 gb NTFS volumes.

So your reason to use NTFS is not valid from my experience.

Post by Ross Ridge
You're also probably going to find more and more software
is going to assume NTFS.

I am aware of no user application software that is aware of what file
system it is running on, save for the fact that some video editing
software seems to know that it must truncate or span the 4 gb file-size
barrier when writing to a FAT32 volume.

Post by Ross Ridge
I have a FAT16 boot partition, (...)

Why would anyone have a FAT16 partition in this day and age?

Post by Ross Ridge
if the original poster wants to the use boot menu to boot
into MS-DOS and he can do so and still use NTFS.

And still be stuck looking for a DOS NTFS driver if he needs to be able
to access the NTFS volume from DOS.

Ross Ridge

2009-10-29 01:59:58 UTC

Post by Ross Ridge
Despite what has been said in this thread, NTFS is not a full
journaling filesystem, it only journals filesystem meta-data.
It doesn't journal your data
Would IIS server log files be considered "meta-data", or "my data" ?

Your data, obviously.

Post by Ross Ridge
so your important or critical information doesn't get any special
protection.

Journalling doesn't "protect" user information contained in files.

If NTFS journaled data, it would provide the same consistancy guarantees
to data as it does to its own meta-data. A data write operation would
either entirely committed to the disk or not happen at all, and if it
does get comitted all previously issued writes would also be guaranteed
comitted in their entirety. Databases and other important and critical
forms of information storage often need properties like this, so they
have to implement there own measures to ensure data consistancy under
NTFS and FAT.

Post by Ross Ridge
On this system, I have a 32 gb FAT32 c: partition with 120k files in
7,300 directories. It takes about 7 minutes to perform a DOS scandisk
operation on it. I would not call that a stupidly long time.

Most users would consider a boot time of over seven minutes a stupidly
long time time to have to wait.

Post by Ross Ridge
So your reason to use NTFS is not valid from my experience.

You're free to do what ever you want on your own systems, but I don't
think anyone is taking your advice here seriously.

Ross Ridge

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] ***@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //

DOS Guy

2009-10-29 02:35:05 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
Would IIS server log files be considered "meta-data", or "my
data" ?

Your data, obviously.

Then my experience is that journalling does not "protect" user data that
has been written to a file.

Post by DOS Guy
On this system, I have a 32 gb FAT32 c: partition with 120k files
in 7,300 directories. It takes about 7 minutes to perform a DOS
scandisk operation on it. I would not call that a stupidly long
time.

Most users would consider a boot time of over seven minutes a
stupidly long time time to have to wait.

Who says my system must, or does, run scandisk every time it boots?

In fact, it does not. Why do you think it does?

Scandisk is run if or when I tell it to run, or it will run upon startup
in the VERY rare case that a flag is set somewhere in the mbr as a
response to an improper shutdown or system lockup.

Post by Ross Ridge
... but I don't think anyone is taking your advice here
seriously.

There once was an emperor that had no clothes, but the people didn't
want to admit it to each other because of peer pressure and fear of
group-rejection.

Ross Ridge

2009-10-29 02:46:48 UTC

Post by Ross Ridge
Most users would consider a boot time of over seven minutes a
stupidly long time time to have to wait.
Who says my system must, or does, run scandisk every time it boots?

No one.

Post by Ross Ridge
... but I don't think anyone is taking your advice here
seriously.

There once was an emperor that had no clothes, but the people didn't
want to admit it to each other because of peer pressure and fear of
group-rejection.

If you took the time to get your facts correct and didn't misrepresent
what other people have said, you might be taken more seriously.

Ross Ridge

--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] ***@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //

DOS Guy

2009-10-29 02:58:52 UTC

Post by Ross Ridge
If you took the time to get your facts correct and didn't
misrepresent what other people have said, you might be
taken more seriously.

Why don't you give us your comments on this material:

http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2008/03/ntfs-vs-fatxx-data-recovery.html

Jim Leonard

2009-10-29 19:02:37 UTC

Post by Ross Ridge
If you took the time to get your facts correct and didn't
misrepresent what other people have said, you might be
taken more seriously.

http://cquirke.blogspot.com/2008/03/ntfs-vs-fatxx-data-recovery.html

He won't, but I will: I get the impression from that blog post that
he has spent a ton of time recovering files because he had a poor
backup strategy, and he is trying to justify his poor backup strategy
by promoting the filesystem that recovers easily from crashes.

DOS Guy

2009-10-31 00:09:49 UTC

Post by Jim Leonard
He won't, but I will: I get the impression from that blog post
that he has spent a ton of time recovering files because he had
a poor backup strategy, and he is trying to justify his poor
backup strategy by promoting the filesystem that recovers easily
from crashes.

I'll take a file system that recovers easily vs one that requires
inordinate backup fuss any day.

Jim Leonard

2009-11-02 15:25:49 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
I'll take a file system that recovers easily vs one that requires
inordinate backup fuss any day.

And I'll take one that doesn't need recovery in the first place. So
this is where we disagree.

Jim Leonard

2009-10-26 12:28:31 UTC

XP pro runs fine on FAT-32 (I do it all the time). I think NTFS is for
the birds (when you dig down, there are more downsides to NTFS vs FAT32
and very little benefit).

Wow, I guess you don't like retaining filesystem sanity after a power
outage. NTFS is journaled -- FAT32 isn't.

About a year ago I did exactly what you're looking for - I formatted a
blank 40 gb drive as a single FAT-32 volume, installed DOS 7 on it, and

You need to clarify which version of "DOS 7" as all regular commercial
releases of PC-DOS 7 did not support FAT32. If you're using something
that does support FAT32, please write what you're using.

DOS-Guy

2009-10-26 13:11:27 UTC

Post by Jim Leonard
You write the above like it's a bad thing incomplete transactions are
discarded. You would rather keep them? Being incomplete, their
integrity is unverifiable.

I've lost data on NT systems with failing power supplies and failing UPS
batteries *BECAUSE* of journaling. With FAT32 I could have recovered
that data.

I know I've lost data, because I obtained intermediate versions of
certain files (log files, notably) that the OS typically keeps open for
hours or days on end. When I compare the intermediate version with the
"final" version on disk, they are different.

Had the OS been FAT32, a simple scandisk would have either adjusted the
length of the file to include the last few clusters, or give me the
choice to convert those clusters to separate files where I could deal
with them later.

Post by Jim Leonard
FAT32 is not a copy-on-write filesystem, so lost cluster chains
are *bad*, not good.

If you need copy-on-write (ie - in a server situation) then sure, NTFS
is more appropriate. But the main point is that for a consumer PC,
home, SOHO situation, NTFS gives next to no benefits to the user, but
can be much more difficult to rebuild if the drive experiences a logical
or even hardware failure). You will note that NTFS is proprietary, and
the number of recovery tools that exist for it pales in comparison to
FAT tools. You also say nothing about the performance hit and extra
drive activity caused by journalling.

Post by Jim Leonard
You need to clarify which version of "DOS 7" as all regular
commercial releases of PC-DOS 7 did not support FAT32.

Here is where you can get more information and even download it:

ms-dos7.hit . bg

The OS described as MS-DOS 7 or 7.1 is basically all the dos files
stripped out of a system after win-98se or ME is installed. I guess
it's what Microsoft would have sold as a separate DOS version.

With that version, you can boot into a pure DOS environment and have
long file-name support.

Rugxulo

2009-10-28 00:06:02 UTC

Hi, :-)

Post by DOS Guy
About a year ago I did exactly what you're looking for - I formatted a
blank 40 gb drive as a single FAT-32 volume, installed DOS 7 on it, and

You need to clarify which version of "DOS 7" as all regular commercial
releases of PC-DOS 7 did not support FAT32. If you're using something
that does support FAT32, please write what you're using.

MS-DOS 7 from Win95 before OSR2.5 didn't support FAT32, no, but I
think later versions did (though I could be wrong).

As far as PC-DOS, I thought I told you before about what Lucho
"found", but I haven't tried it myself as I have no interest in it
(FreeDOS works for my needs):

=============================================
"PC-DOS v7.1 is present in the IBM ServerGuide Scripting Toolkit
(MIGR-53564) which can freely be downloaded, starting at
http://www.ibm.com/systems/management/sgstk.html "

"PC-DOS is Da Best DOS kernel with LBA/FAT32 support, running even on
8086"
=============================================

In other words, I don't know how legal it is, so caveat emptor.

DOS Guy

2009-10-28 13:52:28 UTC

Post by Jim Leonard
You need to clarify which version of "DOS 7" as all regular
commercial releases of PC-DOS 7 did not support FAT32.

MS-DOS 7 from Win95 before OSR2.5 didn't support FAT32, no, but I
think later versions did (though I could be wrong).

What are you people talking about?

MS-Dos 6.22 was the last real, stand-alone version of DOS sold by
Microsoft, and it supports FAT32.

The thing called "DOS 7" or 7.1 that I'm referring to is a construct put
together by some people from the DOS files contained in the release of
Win-98se and Me.

This "MS-DOS 7" is theoretically what Microsoft would have created had
it elected to release a successor to 6.22.

For some reason my NNTP server flags the following URL as "banned", but
it's a harmless URL:

ms-dos7.hit . bg

Remove the spaces between hit and bg and go to that webpage.

You will get a complete description of this "MS-DOS 7.1" and will be
able to download it.

H-Man

2009-10-28 19:34:23 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
MS-Dos 6.22 was the last real, stand-alone version of DOS sold by
Microsoft, and it supports FAT32.

I'd be interested how you managed that bit of magic ;)

AFAIK there are drivers available that allow access to LFNs but there was
nothing like that AFAIR when 6.22 was released, and was not made available
by MS. If you somehow managed to get 6.22 installed on a FAT32 partition,
I'd be interested in knowing how to go about that.

--
HK

DOS Guy

2009-10-29 01:49:56 UTC

Post by H-Man

Post by DOS Guy
MS-Dos 6.22 was the last real, stand-alone version of DOS
sold by Microsoft, and it supports FAT32.

I'd be interested how you managed that bit of magic ;)

Aaak.

Ok, that was totally wrong.

I must have had this unconcious link in my head that 6.22 was more
recent that it actually is.

Post by H-Man
AFAIK there are drivers available that allow access to LFNs but
there was nothing like that AFAIR when 6.22 was released, and
was not made available by MS. If you somehow managed to get 6.22
installed on a FAT32 partition, I'd be interested in knowing how
to go about that.

No, I haven't messed with DOS 6.22 since before win-95 came out.

This material might be useful:

http://www.cn-dos.net/msdos71/index.htm

Whenever I want to put DOS on a machine, I simply throw a floppy in my
PC, open a command shell and enter "format a: /s" and maybe throw fdisk
and format.exe on the floppy and I'm ready to deal with the other
machine.

H-Man

2009-10-29 18:22:42 UTC

Post by H-Man

Post by DOS Guy
MS-Dos 6.22 was the last real, stand-alone version of DOS
sold by Microsoft, and it supports FAT32.

I'd be interested how you managed that bit of magic ;)

Aaak.
Ok, that was totally wrong.
I must have had this unconcious link in my head that 6.22 was more
recent that it actually is.

No sweat, could happen to anyone.

--
HK

Rugxulo

2009-10-28 20:19:41 UTC

Hi,

Post by Rugxulo
MS-DOS 7 from Win95 before OSR2.5 didn't support FAT32, no, but I
think later versions did (though I could be wrong).

MS-Dos 6.22 was the last real, stand-alone version of DOS sold by
Microsoft, and it supports FAT32.

MS arguably still sells DOS (on their developer network thingy or
whatever it's called). MS-DOS 6.22 may be the last standalone version,
but Win9x had MS-DOS 7.10 (and WinMe had 8.00). And no, I don't think
any MS-DOS before Win95 supported FAT32 (or LFNs). Some other third-
party DOSes do, but 6.22 does not. Heck, you can't even install MS-DOS
except on the very beginning of a hard drive. DR-DOS, while better,
also doesn't (officially, i.e. without the TSR hack) support FAT32,
and it has trouble recognizing *any* FAT partitions found before the
active / bootable one. FreeDOS has none of those issues, but even it
is (for now) limited to 2 GB per file even on FAT32.

As MS later admitted, there was no technical reason to not ship it
separately from Windows at the time. It just looks like it's more
integrated, but you can indeed easily strip out the DOS-only parts for
raw booting if you want.

Post by DOS Guy
For some reason my NNTP server flags the following URL as "banned", but
ms-dos7.hit . bg
Remove the spaces between hit and bg and go to that webpage.
You will get a complete description of this "MS-DOS 7.1" and will be
able to download it.

That's not legal, as most of us are well aware. Hence we don't
recommend that, even if you erroneously think they don't sell it
anymore. (Even if they didn't, that still wouldn't be legal.)

It's better to just use FreeDOS (or even Linux or *BSD or Menuet or
OctaOS ...) if DOS freeware doesn't do what you want.

DOS Guy

2009-10-29 02:21:35 UTC

http://ms-dos7.hit . bg

(for some reason, hit dot bg is listed as a "banned" domain by uribl.com
and I must mung it to get past the censorship being applied by this nntp
server)

You will get a complete description of this "MS-DOS 7.1" and
will be able to download it.

That's not legal, as most of us are well aware. Hence we don't
recommend that, even if you erroneously think they don't sell
it anymore.

My philosophy is that Microsoft is a criminal organization - and you
can't really steal from a criminal.

Besides, I would think that most IT people (or at least the people
reading these newsgroups) would have a few bootable "win-98" floppys
hanging around. If you've got that, then you've got your FAT-32
compatible DOS right there, ready to take to another PC and install.

Is it legal? Maybe not, but neither is J-walking or spitting on the
sidewalk.

Note that when you format a volume with /s command, or when you transfer
the DOS system files using sys, you are not prompted with a EULA message
or an "I agree" query ...

I find the concept of paying for DOS (MS-dos) to be bizzare or strange.
It's like buying a PC and having to go out and pay for the bios.

Here's another way to look at it.

If Microsoft sold (in total) 1 million copies of DOS (say, DOS 6.22)
then they have nothing to complain about if people trade and copy and
give it to each other, as long as the total number of systems running
DOS 6.22 never exceeds 1 million at any point in time.

Doesn't have to be DOS 6.22. It could be windows 98, XP, etc. The
concept is the same.

Jim Leonard

2009-10-29 19:09:21 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
My philosophy is that Microsoft is a criminal organization - and you
can't really steal from a criminal.

Then why should we take anything you say seriously? I think your
advice to run FAT32 against all odds is criminally negligent to anyone
who relies on your advice to keep their data integrity high; does that
mean it's ok to steal from you?

Post by DOS Guy
Note that when you format a volume with /s command, or when you transfer
the DOS system files using sys, you are not prompted with a EULA message
or an "I agree" query ...

Nevertheless, the EULA is still attached to the product. Doesn't
matter if it prints out in big flashing letters when you use format.
(BTW, it *is* displayed when you install DOS 5.0 or later using the
bootable setup disks.)

Post by DOS Guy
I find the concept of paying for DOS (MS-dos) to be bizzare or strange.
It's like buying a PC and having to go out and pay for the bios.

Right, because who should deserve to get paid for their work?

Post by DOS Guy
If Microsoft sold (in total) 1 million copies of DOS (say, DOS 6.22)
then they have nothing to complain about if people trade and copy and
give it to each other, as long as the total number of systems running
DOS 6.22 never exceeds 1 million at any point in time.

You're under the impression that all software is a physical product
with second-sale rights, like books. Not all software is. When you
buy most commercial software, you're actually purchasing a license to
the use the software under certain conditions, not the physical media
the software comes on.

If you don't like this and wish to cease being a hypocrite, then stop
running MSDOS and start running a free OS like FreeDOS. Rugxulo would
be happy to set you up with a distribution. There's even an 8086
variant that, while slow, does indeed run on any 808x or 80286 machine
and still gives you FAT32.

DOS Guy

2009-10-30 01:29:09 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
My philosophy is that Microsoft is a criminal organization -
and you can't really steal from a criminal.

Then why should we take anything you say seriously?

My criticism of Microsoft and their criminal operating methods has got
nothing to do with technical analysis and end-user experiences of their
products or constructs such as file systems.

If you are a Microsoft psycophant and appologist, then fine - you love
Microsoft and everything they do and how they do it. So we disagree
about Microsoft the corporate entity.

But that's on a different scale than any technical discussion about
their products. It's sad that you appear to not be able to
differentiate between the two realms.

Post by Jim Leonard
I think your advice to run FAT32 against all odds is criminally
negligent to anyone who relies on your advice to keep their
data integrity high; does that mean it's ok to steal from you?

You would be incorrect to ascribe a form of "criminal" negligence to my
IT practices as they pertain to desktop file systems. There is nothing
in any criminal code of any jursidiction that criminalizes a user's
choice of computer file system. So your premis is poorly crafted. I
can't be a criminal if my choice of file system (and it's possible
implications) is not a crime. Hence it's not ok to steal from me.

And my advice to "run FAT32" is not against any odds. This is not a
race track or casino we're talking about here.

Post by DOS Guy
I find the concept of paying for DOS (MS-dos) to be bizzare
or strange. It's like buying a PC and having to go out and
pay for the bios.

Right, because who should deserve to get paid for their work?

How many times should Microsoft continue to get paid for the same
product? Possibly one they don't even sell any more? The programmers
don't get paid on a royalty basis. Maybe they should...

Post by Jim Leonard
You're under the impression that all software is a physical
product with second-sale rights, like books. Not all software
is.

Maybe not all software, but what about specifically DOS? Or Windoze?

Post by Jim Leonard
If you don't like this and wish to cease being a hypocrite,
then stop running MSDOS and start running a free OS like
FreeDOS.

My OS of choice, on many of the systems I interact with, is Windows
98se, all of which run Office 2k Premium. That combination, along with
some accounting and contact management software circa 2000 - 2002
satisfies all of our small business operating needs. Our developers run
XP and various virtual platforms. But I digress. As someone who's main
OS is win-98, I feel that my "shadow" OS is DOS, and I will boot into
DOS on any system I choose when I have to or need to.

We have a few technical / bench systems that run custom software in DOS,
and those machines do boot directly into DOS 7 (the win-98 version of
dos) but they don't actually have win-98 installed on them.

So my dos needs are met with DOS 7, as created simply by "format a: /s"
from a win-98 command shell. If I copy all of the c:\windows\command
dos files onto the floppy, and then copy all the remaining dos 6.22
files, then I have a full DOS if I need it. It's second nature - I
don't give it a second thought.

H-Man

2009-10-29 19:24:48 UTC

http://ms-dos7.hit . bg

(for some reason, hit dot bg is listed as a "banned" domain by uribl.com
and I must mung it to get past the censorship being applied by this nntp
server)

You will get a complete description of this "MS-DOS 7.1" and
will be able to download it.

That's not legal, as most of us are well aware. Hence we don't
recommend that, even if you erroneously think they don't sell
it anymore.

My philosophy is that Microsoft is a criminal organization - and you
can't really steal from a criminal.
Besides, I would think that most IT people (or at least the people
reading these newsgroups) would have a few bootable "win-98" floppys
hanging around. If you've got that, then you've got your FAT-32
compatible DOS right there, ready to take to another PC and install.
Is it legal? Maybe not, but neither is J-walking or spitting on the
sidewalk.
Note that when you format a volume with /s command, or when you transfer
the DOS system files using sys, you are not prompted with a EULA message
or an "I agree" query ...
I find the concept of paying for DOS (MS-dos) to be bizzare or strange.
It's like buying a PC and having to go out and pay for the bios.
Here's another way to look at it.
If Microsoft sold (in total) 1 million copies of DOS (say, DOS 6.22)
then they have nothing to complain about if people trade and copy and
give it to each other, as long as the total number of systems running
DOS 6.22 never exceeds 1 million at any point in time.
Doesn't have to be DOS 6.22. It could be windows 98, XP, etc. The
concept is the same.

Really??
Anyone buying any of this?

--
HK

E. S. Fabian

2009-10-29 19:57:59 UTC

H-Man wrote:
| DOS Guy wrote:
...
|| My philosophy is that Microsoft is a criminal organization - and you
|| can't really steal from a criminal.

Are you allowed to kill a criminal?

|| I find the concept of paying for DOS (MS-dos) to be bizzare or
|| strange. It's like buying a PC and having to go out and pay for the
|| bios.

You do, when you buy the PC. The price of the BIOS is part of the price of
the PC.

|| Here's another way to look at it.
||
|| If Microsoft sold (in total) 1 million copies of DOS (say, DOS 6.22)
|| then they have nothing to complain about if people trade and copy
|| and give it to each other, as long as the total number of systems
|| running DOS 6.22 never exceeds 1 million at any point in time.
||
|| Doesn't have to be DOS 6.22. It could be windows 98, XP, etc. The
|| concept is the same.
|
| Really??
| Anyone buying any of this?

Not many. "DOS Guy" must believe that the people who developed MS-DOS don't
need food, clothing, shelter, schools for their children, etc.

--
Steve
<><

DOS Guy

2009-10-30 01:05:18 UTC

Post by E. S. Fabian
Are you allowed to kill a criminal?

Apparently the state can - if that criminal has been convicted of
murder.

And in some cases, you can use deadly force on someone who is
threatening you with bodily harm (eg home robery, home invasion)

Post by E. S. Fabian
Not many. "DOS Guy" must believe that the people who developed
MS-DOS don't need food, clothing, shelter, schools for their
children, etc.

If Microsoft sells 1 million licenses of something, and if there is
never more than 1 million licenses (or copies of) in use at any one
time, then microsoft has suffered no economic harm or dammage in that
situation.

Further more, if Microsoft elects to no longer sell licenses for a given
product (ie - windows 98) then they suffer no economic harm if that
product is downloaded, copied, passed around at will, etc.

This raises the concept of a license that becomes dormant or abandoned.
I could say that my use of a particular Windows 98 product key
represents an abandoned license that Microsoft did receive payment for
once upon a time.

Again, as long as the number of systems using a licensed product does
not exceed the number of licenses sold, then you can't demonstrate
economic harm or loss to the vendor.

Klaus Meinhard

2009-10-30 08:03:09 UTC

Hallo DOS Guy,

Post by DOS Guy
This raises the concept of a license that becomes dormant or
abandoned. I could say that my use of a particular Windows 98 product
key represents an abandoned license that Microsoft did receive
payment for once upon a time.

Now you're weaseling into the "abandonware" realm.

While I may have some sympathy for the concept, fact is that your
personal justification for infringement of copyright and license law is
still a breach of the law. Copyright and licensing laws are what they
are, until you succeed in changing them (call your congress man). Until
then your practice is against these laws, and may border on the
criminal.

--
Best Regards,

* Klaus Meinhard *
<www.4dos.info>

DOS Guy

2009-10-30 13:46:20 UTC

Copyright and licensing laws are what they are, until you succeed
in changing them (call your congress man). Until then your practice
is against these laws, and may border on the criminal.

I think there is a practical if not legal difference if I were to
re-package some old copy of DOS or Windoze and sell it to someone else
vs installing as many copies of those products as I want on my own
computers for my own use.

In the latter case, Micro$haft will probably never discover what I've
done, but nor could they prove in a court of law that I did not have a
license for each installation. I don't think that Macro$haft has ever
prosecuted (let alone won) such a case.

If Milkro$oft wanted to secure a proper paper trail between themselves
and end-users of their product, then they should have implimented a
different stratagy for distributing their software and not go through
countless intermediary agents. The fact is that their licensing scheme
is so watered down and invisible as to be meaningless and irrelavent to
end users.

Klaus Meinhard

2009-10-31 22:15:28 UTC

Hallo DOS Guy,

Post by DOS Guy
I think there is a practical if not legal difference if I were to
re-package some old copy of DOS or Windoze and sell it to someone else
vs installing as many copies of those products as I want on my own
computers for my own use.

You probably have a license for only one or two machines. Going against
that is illegal in most countries, regardless of how you try to justify
it.

Post by DOS Guy
... Micro$haft...
... Milkro$oft...

I have no further interest to continue in this prepubertal microsoft
bashing.

Microsoft may deem it unnecessary to prosecute license breaks for this
old and nearly dead OS, because there's no longer any money in it. It
would have been the nice thing to make it free and open source software,
just as Rex did with 4DOS.

That is, however, no reason to dance before their doorstep and let your
thing hang out just to show how plucky you are.

Try to write some software and earn money with it. Then lets see how you
think about illegal copying.

--
Herzliche Grüße,

Klaus Meinhard

DOS Guy

2009-10-31 22:52:57 UTC

Post by Klaus Meinhard
You probably have a license for only one or two machines. Going
against that is illegal in most countries, regardless of how you
try to justify it.

Illegal is the wrong word.

When two parties are in conflict with each other over a licensing issue,
the concept of "illegality" does not come into play. Only the
determination if a license violation has occurred, and any court-awarded
dammages that might result. Nobody goes to jail over it.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
Microsoft may deem it unnecessary to prosecute license breaks for
this old and nearly dead OS, because there's no longer any money
in it.

I don't believe that's the reason. I believe the reason is that they
don't want to experience a historical precedent of failure to prosecute
an individual for using one of their products withing having a legit
license.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
That is, however, no reason to dance before their doorstep and
let your thing hang out just to show how plucky you are.

Microsoft (the corporation that has been found guilty of many truly
illegal acts in many countries) needs to understand that even though it
has been granted defacto monopoly status in contrary to existing laws,
that it can't escape competition with itself vis-a-vie the continued (if
not "questionable") use of it's older products.

Making it known that I am depriving Microsoft of revenue by telling it
that I am using it's older defunct products is a pleasure. If the state
will not enforce it's anti-monopoly laws and enable a healthy and
competitive software industry, then I will do my part to deprive
Microsoft any future revenue by using it's older products at will,
against the terms of it's EULA. It is a sad commentary that Windows 98,
for example, is still a viable and practical alternative to XP and newer
OS's. That is to be expected in the monopoly paradigm we have to live
with.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
Try to write some software and earn money with it. Then lets
see how you think about illegal copying.

We do write software for which we charge several thousand dollars for.
We have a simple license-key arrangement to enable the software's
functionality (no dongle).

Klaus Meinhard

2009-11-01 10:22:40 UTC

Hallo DOS Guy,

Post by DOS Guy
When two parties are in conflict with each other over a licensing
issue, the concept of "illegality" does not come into play. Only the
determination if a license violation has occurred, and any
court-awarded dammages that might result. Nobody goes to jail over
it.

... as long as you don't do it on a grand scale or commercially, as long
as you live in a western democracy and can afford good lawyers, and as
long as your countries jails are more than full anyway.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
That is, however, no reason to dance before their doorstep and
let your thing hang out just to show how plucky you are.

Making it known that I am depriving Microsoft of revenue by telling it
that I am using it's older defunct products is a pleasure.

That's exactly what I meant above.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
Try to write some software and earn money with it. Then lets
see how you think about illegal copying.

We do write software for which we charge several thousand dollars for.
We have a simple license-key arrangement to enable the software's
functionality (no dongle).

So your software is probably so specialized that the hacker kids didn't
come across it, or so oldfangled (still writing DOS progs?) that they
took pity :-)

--
Best Regards,

* Klaus Meinhard *
<www.4dos.info>

DOS Guy

2009-11-01 14:19:16 UTC

Post by Klaus Meinhard

Post by DOS Guy
When two parties are in conflict with each other over a
licensing issue, (...) Nobody goes to jail over it.

... as long as you don't do it on a grand scale or
commercially,

That's more-or-less the determining factor. If the police or law
enforcement agency can lay a charge and prosecute a case without needing
assistance or input from the copyright holder. This typically happens
when a police raid stumbles upon boxes of music or movie CD's.

I don't think that any retail PC vendor loading their PC's with hacked
or duplicate XP license keys has ever been taken to court or lost a
court case, and even if they did, I don't think they'd ever get a jail
sentence. Out-of-court settlements - probably.

Post by Klaus Meinhard
as long as you live in a western democracy and can afford
good lawyers, and as long as your countries jails are more
than full anyway.

Nobody goes to jail over a civil-court matter - unless perhaps if you're
found in contempt of court (bad behavior in court, failure to pay a
court-ordered judgement, etc).

Post by Klaus Meinhard

Post by Klaus Meinhard
That is, however, no reason to dance before their doorstep

I am using it's older defunct products - is a pleasure.

That's exactly what I meant above.

I think it's a good reason. A way to give Macro$haft the middle finger.

Post by Klaus Meinhard

Post by DOS Guy
We do write software

So your software is probably so specialized that the hacker
kids didn't come across it

Yes

Post by Klaus Meinhard
or so oldfangled (still writing DOS progs?) that they
took pity :-)

It's mostly a suite of Windoze apps (visual studio 6) but it does have
one program that is a compiled PB program (ie 16-bit DOS) used for data
acquisition (it runs on XP with the help of a port-mapper because it
performs direct hardware I/O access).

DOS Guy

2009-10-26 13:28:38 UTC

Post by Myron A. Calhoun
I have a real DOS machine but would like to "combine" it with
my Windoze XP Home machine.

I still think that the simplest (and best) solution is to simply install
XP on a FAT-32 volume after DOS has been installed on the same drive.
XP will automatically create a boot menu, allowing you to boot into DOS
or XP at system start-up.

And I recommend DOS 7.1 because it has long file-name support.

And if you don't like the way that Microsoft's format program creates
FAT-32 volumes with large cluster size, then use one of the third-party
drive preparation tools and create a FAT-32 volume with the cluster size
(allocation unit) that you want. Get Hiren's Boot CD for that (lots of
drive tools, utilities, etc).

Ragnarok

2009-11-11 05:08:29 UTC

To: mcalhoun

From Newsgroup: comp.os.msdos.programmer
I have a real DOS machine but would like to "combine" it with my Windoze
XP Home machine. I've installed Sun's VirtualBox and it will boot
command.com from a floppy disk, but it cannot "see" any hard drive.
Has anyone gotten any farther with VirtualBox?

lastest virtualbox put the virtual disk on SATA bus, that (i think ) dos
cant see it
try to change it to IDE
--- Synchronet 3.15 Hack by Ragnarok rev. a-Linux NewsLink 1.91
* Dock Sud BBS - Avellaneda, Bs As, Argentina - telnet://bbs.docksud.com.ar

Ragnarok

2009-11-11 05:08:29 UTC

To: mcalhoun

DOS Guy

2009-11-12 14:00:21 UTC

lastest virtualbox put the virtual disk on SATA bus, that (i think)
dos cant see it try to change it to IDE

What do you mean - SATA "bus" ?

Do you mean SATA drive?

lastest virtualbox put the virtual disk on SATA bus

Didn't it as you which drive to put it on?

SATA bus that (i think) dos cant see it

DOS can see SATA drives just fine - as long as they contain FAT-32
volumes.

Peter Schepers

2009-11-12 14:23:22 UTC

Post by DOS Guy
DOS can see SATA drives just fine - as long as they contain FAT-32
volumes.

_Only_ if the BIOS has the SATA drive controller set to Legacy or
Compatible, or some such. Set to AHCI and DOS will not see it. Some
Toshiba laptops can't turn SATA to Legacy, and likely newer machines also
cannot switch the SATA modes, thus further limiting older OS's.

PS

H-Man

2009-11-12 22:26:57 UTC

lastest virtualbox put the virtual disk on SATA bus, that (i think)
dos cant see it try to change it to IDE

What do you mean - SATA "bus" ?
Do you mean SATA drive?

lastest virtualbox put the virtual disk on SATA bus

Didn't it as you which drive to put it on?

SATA bus that (i think) dos cant see it

DOS can see SATA drives just fine - as long as they contain FAT-32
volumes.

To be clear MS-DOS < v6.22 cannot read the FAT32 FS. I know you know this,
but it should be made clear. And DOS cannot read just any FAT drive. Set
your BIOS to AHCI mode for the SATA drives and try to get DOS to read the
drive. An AHCI drive can still be formatted in FAT or FAT32. It gets even
more difficult with a RAID array, and yes, these can still be FAT32. DOS
uses the BIOS to access the drive interface, so the drive interface either
needs to be something that DOS knows about, or you need a driver/TSR to
intercept the BIOS calls and translate them. Quite doable with DOS but not
common. Newer interfaces, like AHCI for any chipset I've ever seen, do not
have a DOS driver/TSR available for them. I doubt we'll ever see one. Most
BIOSs allow you to set the SATA interface mode to IDE, which is something
DOS can read and write to directly via the BIOS. With the right tools DOS
can see anything the BIOS can, but you can't necessarily do anything
constructive with it, or use it in any conventional sense.

--
HK

E. S. Fabian

2009-11-13 01:31:31 UTC

H-Man wrote:
| With the right tools DOS can see anything the BIOS can, but you
| can't necessarily do anything constructive with it, or use it in any
| conventional sense.

Technically speaking, there is no reason one could not write an interface
driver so "DOS" could have full access to an NTFS drive, or any other file
system, as long as the BIOS can provide the physical access, or one is
willing to expand the BIOS to do it. Neither data structures on disk, nor
physical access are magic. The real issue is that nobody wants to devote the
labor to do it, when alternates are abundant. DOS was designed for small,
slow computers (in today's technology). I spent 600.00 USD on my first hard
drive, with a whopping 10 MB! And I also had to write my own BIOS to access
it from CP/M. I would not want to do the same job over again.

However, this whole discussion is OT - it has no relationship to 4DOS.

--
Steve

Klaus Meinhard

2009-11-13 10:33:05 UTC

Hallo,

Post by E. S. Fabian

Post by E. S. Fabian
With the right tools DOS can see anything the BIOS can, but you
can't necessarily do anything constructive with it, or use it in any
conventional sense.

Technically speaking, there is no reason one could not write an
interface driver so "DOS" could have full access to an NTFS drive, or
any other file system, as long as the BIOS can provide the physical
access, or one is willing to expand the BIOS to do it.

Looking at it realistically, DOS is dead.

A modern computer doesn't even have floppy drives. That means you cannot
install any old DOS from the original media (FreeDOS may have an CD iso
file, I haven't looked lately). So you need at least 1 modern system to
build an old DOS system.

Interaction with hardware today is mostly SATA and USB, filesystem
mostly NTFS. You have to find and install drivers for these (and not all
are very reliable), in addition to the other DOS drivers for screen,
keyboard, mouse(?), CD drive, compatibilty, network and internet access,
which may leave you without enough memory for any serious work even
using a third party mem manager. Of course you have the alternative to
dumb down a modern, fast machine to run DOS on it, but how intelligent
is that?

You then have to find printer drivers for all your printing apps,
preferably for a very old needle printer from a flee market. How long
will it last?

You then have to find apps to do anything still worthwhile, which isn't
easy and in many cases at least dubious if not illegal, even if nobody
sues you. I know I couldn't fulfill my needs starting from internet
access, media center, office apps, games, synching with my mobile etc.
with an old DOS machine and an 80x25 character screen.

Taken together this means that you put so much of your time into
building and maintaining such a system that you can justify it today
only as a hobby for diehards, which is okay. But it isn't even a viable
OS for a family computer today, much less a viable business environment.

If the defenders of the virtue of DOS would take the trouble to look at
XP, Vista or Wiindows 7, they would learn that they can have their
beloved DOS, even with several instances on the same screen, several
different versions at the same time,

Of course all of this is off topic here, but look at the time the last
on_topic message was posted here. Even the name of this group now
precludes users of TCC/LE, the free NT version of 4DOS, or its
commercial sisters 4NT, Take Command, TCC etc. to find it as a forum for
their questions.

So really, should we care (taking into consideration the time to
admonish offenders, and the inabilty to do something if not heeded)?

--
Best Regards,

* Klaus Meinhard *
<www.4dos.info>

Rugxulo

2009-11-13 22:55:20 UTC