VOGONS


First post, by infiniteclouds

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I'm using DOS 3.3 for my Tandy 1000 installed on an XT-IDE 2GB Compact Flash. Due to the nature of the machine and DOS 3.x I am limited to 32MB partitions so I made 24 partitions (D:, E: F:, G: etc, ) but only the C: Partition and first 32MB show up when I connect the CF to my Windows 7 PC. How can I see my other partitions on there so I can drag and drop more games into the machine?

Reply 6 of 24, by konc

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Windows don't allow partitioning removable storage. You can't for example create partitions on a usb flash drive, and they show only the 1st partition of such devices.
I don't know if this can be changed or circumvented, I'm just explaining what's going on.

Reply 7 of 24, by dr_st

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konc wrote on 2020-06-28, 11:47:

Windows don't allow partitioning removable storage. You can't for example create partitions on a usb flash drive, and they show only the 1st partition of such devices.
I don't know if this can be changed or circumvented, I'm just explaining what's going on.

I don't think it's true. I partitioned my 4TB USB hard drive, and can see both partitions on all Windows computers I connect to (at least Vista or later).

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Reply 9 of 24, by Jo22

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From what I know, Windows NT-based OSes do not show multiple partions of removable media.
Only partition one.

That includes CF cards, SD cards, USB thumb drives, floppy disks etc.
USB hard drives are a special case, of course. They are considered hard drives, no matter what interface they use.

Linux and macOS can see other partitions on flash media just fine.

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 11 of 24, by konc

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dr_st wrote on 2020-06-28, 15:00:
konc wrote on 2020-06-28, 11:47:

Windows don't allow partitioning removable storage. You can't for example create partitions on a usb flash drive, and they show only the 1st partition of such devices.
I don't know if this can be changed or circumvented, I'm just explaining what's going on.

I don't think it's true. I partitioned my 4TB USB hard drive, and can see both partitions on all Windows computers I connect to (at least Vista or later).

I guess it's the interpretation of "removable" by windows. It's easy, just try to partition a usb flash drive

Reply 13 of 24, by Jo22

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infiniteclouds wrote on 2020-06-28, 20:22:

So if you have a retro OS - be it DOS or Windows 98 - installed on a Compact Flash/SD you cannot access any additional partitions when viewing it on Windows 7/10?

Without third party tools?
Not sure, I haven't found out yet.

Windows 10 added multi-partition support
in build 1703.

https://borncity.com/win/2017/04/22/windows-1 … tition-support/

Another workaround might be using IDE-CF adapter instead.
But this requires a reboot everytime you change the card.
Or, maybe, some of the Lexar CF readers for Firewire might do.
Or, CF cards that are "fixed" (industrial types).

That being said, I nolonger use Windows really. 🙁

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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Reply 14 of 24, by darry

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A VirtualBox VM running Linux is my method of choice for accessing weird partition setups or filesystems using USB pass-through .

A Windows 98 SE VM might work too, if the VirtualBox USB pass-through can be made to work without the VirtualBox add-ons (there are none for Windows 9x).

Reply 15 of 24, by infiniteclouds

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Installing another OS on a VM seems like a lot of work just to access partitions on a removable media. Is anyone familiar with any aforementioned third party tools that will allow me to do this in Windows?

Reply 16 of 24, by dr_st

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Actually, it seems both claims regarding Windows and partitions on removable storage are somewhat true.

Indeed, USB hard drives are an exception; as I said - multiple partitions on USB hard drives work since Vista.

At least on Win10, it is possible to partition USB flash drives too. It may be needed to use Diskpart once to remove the old partition, before it can be repartitioned, as described here:
https://superuser.com/questions/145710/how-do … umb-flash-drive

I tried that on a USB flash drive, and low and behold - both partitions are fully recognizable by any Win10 PC. However, my Win7 laptop could only access the first partiition. It sees the other one, but cannot assign letters to it (Disk Management applet complains of an error when you try).

I wonder if there is some patch for Win7 that can address this.

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Reply 17 of 24, by darry

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infiniteclouds wrote on 2020-06-29, 03:37:

Installing another OS on a VM seems like a lot of work just to access partitions on a removable media. Is anyone familiar with any aforementioned third party tools that will allow me to do this in Windows?

VMs can have other use cases and are not that hard to set up, IMHO. Here are just a few of mine:

a) testing software before putting on actual retro hardware
b) Using old DOS ot Windows 9x based BIOS modding software on a modern PC
c) Using a Windows driver installer to get the DOS utilities you need without messing up your retro install
d) Creating floppy images from self-extracting software that can't be unzipped any other way .
e) aforementioned partition access

Reply 18 of 24, by jakethompson1

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Another thought I had is - even if you get this working, will Windows end up creating long filename directory entries (volume label records) for every file you create on the partition?
If I remember right, sometimes Windows creates a long filename even if the filename fits in 8.3 characters, so as to preserve how the filename was capitalized.
When the partitions are only 32MB, it seems long filenames could add up and reduce the capacity of the partition.
This would be another reason to go in the direction of Linux. If you use the "msdos" filesystem type then long filenames are disabled; if you use "vfat" they are enabled.

Reply 19 of 24, by Shagittarius

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Windows 10 will write some volume information on those DOS drives but not enough to even consider it causing a space issue. I just saw this topic but have already been through all this discovery with my CF 5170 machine when attempting to back it up. Only Win 10 saw the additional partitions and it makes a bit of a mess writing a few hidden files about the volume on each partition but nothing that i've seen that causes problems when the drive is back in its host machine, and certainly not of any size at all.

Another issue not mentioned is the use of 3rd party backup solutions, as far as I can tell there's nothing that will run on windows 10 and make an image of an MSDOS removable drive. So far I've just zipped everything on each disk separately. Either the software wont run on 64bit, or the software doesn't support DOS volumes for backup, or the backup software doesn't like the removable drive...

So If anyone knows some imaging software that might be able to image the entire volume on windows 10 let me know.

Last edited by Shagittarius on 2020-06-29, 15:02. Edited 2 times in total.