I tried to reformat with GParted, but it was supsiciously fast. Formatting should take forever, right? I'm going to try bootable DOS ISO. Some mentioned EasyBCD but it does seem proprietary, and GParted terminal has a pretty complete BASH. But then I am thinkig to format FAT16 initially.
It had w7 but moving the partition messed it up and notheing else will load
I decided I want to put XP on it, because w7 doesn't like to be moved
I am trying to replicate an old set up (2007 AOpen desktop - won't be able to access) where I used GParted and GRUB to triple boot MSDOS 6.22, XP and QUantian (Knoppix/Debian)
Laptop and OSes are all old, probably as old as my old set up.
Seems one major issue is IDE Legacy vs UEFI, and MBT vs GPT. Apparently old DOS wants to be the first sector.
You maybe thinking of formatting floppies back then. That is no longer needed on a modern hard disk. The sectors already exist. The format program only has to (for example, for a FAT12/16/32) write the first sector, then an empty FAT table of the appropriate size, then a root directory table, and done. It doesn't bother checking sectors for defects, nor erasing them of previous content. They are marked as empty in the FAT, that's all.
Notice that erasing sectors on a thumbdrive or an SSD disk kill lives.
GParted edits partition tables, it does not "format" -- so you were not "reformatting" anything.
Not since floppy disks disappeared and IDE hard drives appeared. Any hard drive of IDE interface or newer is pre-formatted from the factory and you can not "reformat" it at all.
What you are calling "formatting" is actually creating a partition and initializing a filesystem -- but is not "formatting" (not as "formatting" meant from the days of floppy disks).
And creating a partition is fast, involving the writing of only a few sectors on the drive.
Creating a filesystem is also fast (involving simply writing the filesystems management data onto the drive) and so depending on which filesystem you wrote (if you did, GParted does not create filesystems) that process could be very fast as well.
Formatting was done before floppy discs or hard drives. It was done on EDS before they could be used or moved. It was a very boring job often on the night shift but it kept the price down and satisfied security issues. I put discs on as many empty drives as possible, started the formatting run and settled down for a few hours sleep.
Win 7 (numerous versions) or x86 and 64 bit compatible, depending on what version you use. The partition table is setup according to the system processor's core memory (which is either a 32 bit or a 64 bit configuration, depending upon what the processor and co-processor can handle and its spec.'s, etc...). I will say if the systems are more than
15-20 years old (at this time), they are probably 32 bit (if they date back to the 90's, then you're dealing with FAT 16 and FAT 32 [which are usually prior versions of windows that you can still technically get, but are outmoded now- and not Microsoft supported...]...)
Then the hard drive (and hardware) type have to match up to the processor, as well as the RAM, the other components, etc... compatibility is key there.
That may be the default setting, but it does not have to be-- things are set up according to bootability, then boot order of the drives, and where on the drive you want to start writing-- all in accordance with the capability of the system. I recently did a clean reinstall of win7 PRO on a new 2 TB micro SATA HDD for a consumer. I used a USB drive to do it. It had the needed information on there to start the process of loading it without the boot information. All I had to do was go into "command prompt" mode. The system found the setup files I needed in the proper subdirectory to begin the process of loading win 7 Pro (32 bit version) onto the new massive hard drive. I used some MS-DOS commands to get to where I needed to be, but it allowed me to access the files without using DOS after that.
By the way, DOS 6.11 was the first DOS program in the 1980's, but it had flaws and some revisions, by 1987, DOS 6.22 was what became the most common version of software. DOS was the abbreviation that stood for direct operating system. Sorry for the history lesson. It is good to know these origins of windows, as the first versions of Windows were what I referred to as "behind the scenes DOS commands all at once with pretty picture, graphics, and mouse clicks-- done with each command." That was what made windows really powerful. Some people remember others saying that the operating system was "borrowed from Apple" as there was a version the Macintosh had for their machines in their "System" program- prior to the hard drive coming out. This Microsoft "windows" version was used for IBM PC, compatible, and clone machines.
These systems really started the way we do computing today. They still follow the same basic principles when doing software installation, or doing firmware upgrade, software fixes, or installing drivers, etc... only exception is that you do not have to know the port settings, drive settings, and the IRQ requests so much any more.
Yup. Also older Windows versions insisted on everything in the partition table being aligned on cylinder boundaries, whereas at least some recent Linices insist on saving a few bytes instead, even when you format the disk with real Windows and tell Linux to respect the existing partition table.
I really prefer machines that do as they're damn well told.
I had a hard drive that did this once. I came up with a resolution to the problem that may help. This resolution given below helps to reconstitute a linux system back to windows because linux and windows are not completely compatible nor interchangeable because the commands are a different language from a coding standpoint.
I resolved the above mentioned problem raised by this poster on a similar situation by using dos 6.22 and reformatting the hard disk drive (provided the drive is actually working well- all sectors and heads are in good condition) and I did it with a SATA drive. Format in DOS 6.22 overwrites the master boot record or MBR and places the sectors in proper contiguous order. It makes it to where Windows can be reinstalled.
Windows and the computer terminal you use can help you determine whether or not you have 32 bit or 64 bit system (or you can get the technical spec's) on the processor or computer system to find out about the bit system it uses. You can also check HDD capacity, RAM, ROM, and co-processor (along with version numbers) just to be sure the firmware and other things are okay as well.
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