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From: mcastle@mcs213e.cs.umr.edu (Mike Castle {Nexus})
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.misc
Subject: Re: Installing a formatted disk
Message-ID: <2474@umriscc.isc.umr.edu>
Date: 24 Mar 91 06:37:14 GMT
References: <1991Mar23.195212.26534@mprgate.mpr.ca> <1991Mar23.232516.8910@agate.berkeley.edu>
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In article <1991Mar23.232516.8910@agate.berkeley.edu> c60b-1eq@web-1f.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) writes:
>In order to format a disk to be bootable, use "format /s".  This places
>two position-sensitive files (IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM) on the root
>directory of the disk.  They are hidden files and therefore they do not
>show up on a normal directory listing.  Now, if you forget to format using
>the /s option, and start writing to the disk, your files are likely to
>take the spot where IBMBIO.COM and IBMDOS.COM should go.  If they do,
>then you're pretty much out of luck.  You'll probably need to reformat.

With DOS 4.0, you can run SYS anytime.  Only the boot infomation is location
dependent, and nothing should be writing to the boot sector anyway.  The 
actual files can be placed any where, at least with MS-DOS.

Also, MS-DOS only copies the io.sys and msdos.sys files to the disk, you still
have to manually copy command.com.  I assume PC-DOS probably does the same
thing.
-- 
Mike Castle (Nexus) S087891@UMRVMA.UMR.EDU (preferred)       | XEDIT: Emacs
                mcastle@mcs213k.cs.umr.edu (unix mail-YEACH!)| on a REAL
Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly, and be right | operating
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