hi guys,
this turns out to be challenge:
I have a Computer with a ide drive with dr-dos installed on it. I want to virtualize this Computer. So i used an usb-to-ide Adapter to connect the hard disk to a win 7 Computer. Well it did not work. So, i opened the hard disk Manager. I could see the drive there. But the hard disk Manager complained it want to Change the MBR to initialize it. I guess, that win7 does not recognize the dr-dos file System, but i do not know.
Any suggestions?
Thanks a lot for your help and time up front.
Once we managed this question, i have stage 2:
I have an even older Computer with a ST506 hard drive and dr-dos on it...
virtualizing a dr-dos computer
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mpack
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Re: virtualizing a dr-dos computer
With such vague error reporting, making any useful suggestion is quite hard.
More precise error messages would be useful, and the exact DR-DOS version.
The hard disk should have a legacy MBR on it, Win7 should have no problem recognizing it. It's possible that it doesn't recognize the partition type number and hence can't mount the filesystem. That shouldn't prevent you from imaging the whole disk however. I don't know if Disk2VHD can do it, but CloneVDI certainly should (P2V guidance is given in the release notes).
More precise error messages would be useful, and the exact DR-DOS version.
The hard disk should have a legacy MBR on it, Win7 should have no problem recognizing it. It's possible that it doesn't recognize the partition type number and hence can't mount the filesystem. That shouldn't prevent you from imaging the whole disk however. I don't know if Disk2VHD can do it, but CloneVDI certainly should (P2V guidance is given in the release notes).
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michaln
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Re: virtualizing a dr-dos computer
If the disk management console in Windows complains that it has never seen a disk and needs to initialize it, that is not a problem. That said, it may be prudent to make an image of the disk before letting anything write to it.
Unix-y operating systems are much better for this than Windows, but 'dd' for Windows does exist and will do the job. Once you have a raw image, it's easier to make experiments.
As for the other computer, what exactly does "ST506" mean there? I doubt it's a real Seagate ST-506 drive? Do you mean that it's a disk predating IDE with ST-506 style interface and a separate controller card? Getting the data off of the computer with something like LapLink may be the best option. Assuming the machine has no Ethernet or anything, which is probably a safe assumption
Unix-y operating systems are much better for this than Windows, but 'dd' for Windows does exist and will do the job. Once you have a raw image, it's easier to make experiments.
As for the other computer, what exactly does "ST506" mean there? I doubt it's a real Seagate ST-506 drive? Do you mean that it's a disk predating IDE with ST-506 style interface and a separate controller card? Getting the data off of the computer with something like LapLink may be the best option. Assuming the machine has no Ethernet or anything, which is probably a safe assumption
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mpack
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Re: virtualizing a dr-dos computer
I would suggest that on a Win7 host, CloneVDI should be a lot simpler than "dd". For example, it clones directly to VDI format. If CloneVDI recognizes the partition as FAT16 then it'll also be compacted (if you set the compact option). One complication is that according to Wikipedia, DR-DOS apparantly supported "secure/hidden" partitions. In which case probably nothing except DR-DOS will recognize the partition contents though you can still clone the drive.