Help me make a bootable hard disk

***glennzo*** · #1 3rd December 2010, 12:43 AM

My friends. I have a laptop hard disk with no OS on it. The laptop has no CDROM, floppy, or bootable USB. I am able to plug this hard disk into any other computer using a USB adapter. The hard disk is then accessible. What I need to do is make this hard disk bootable. In the Windows 98 days you could use the good old sys command. There seems to be nothing like that for XP, Vista or Win7 and I have no computers running Win98. I do have computers with XP, Vista and Win7. What is the best way to do this? Yes, I've just spent and hour or better on Google. No luck yet.

The ultimate goal is to make the hard disk bootable and copy Windows installation files to the disk, then run the Windows installer from the hard disk.

kona0197 · #2 3rd December 2010, 01:24 AM

Just put in the Windows disc and install. that will make the drive bootable.

#3 3rd December 2010, 01:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by glennzo

My friends. I have a laptop hard disk with no OS on it. The laptop has no CDROM, floppy, or bootable USB. I am able to plug this hard disk into any other computer using a USB adapter. The hard disk is then accessible. What I need to do is make this hard disk bootable. In the Windows 98 days you could use the good old sys command. There seems to be nothing like that for XP, Vista or Win7 and I have no computers running Win98. I do have computers with XP, Vista and Win7. What is the best way to do this? Yes, I've just spent and hour or better on Google. No luck yet.

The ultimate goal is to make the hard disk bootable and copy Windows installation files to the disk, then run the Windows installer from the hard disk.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kona0197

Just put in the Windows disc and install. that will make the drive bootable.

did you not read it all Kona?

***glennzo*** · #4 3rd December 2010, 08:43 AM

I have an adapter. The drive can be attached to any computer via this USB adapter.

jbkt23 · #5 3rd December 2010, 01:38 AM

If you can't swap it into a laptop with a cd drive, but you do have access to a desktop that does, then you can buy and adapter for the 2.5 drive at a computer store and swap it into or in parallel the desktop. Then you can use the tools you know to format and make a partition bootable.

jpollard · #6 3rd December 2010, 02:18 AM

Or easier, get a USB adapter.

Once you run grub-install targeting the USB disk it should be bootable.

kona0197 · #7 3rd December 2010, 02:39 AM

Sorry. I'm a bit tired.

mwesten · #8 3rd December 2010, 09:28 AM

Plug the USB HD into a linux box and make your FAT partition. Install GRUB4DOS on the drive. Copy over grldr from GRUB4DOS, io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com from W98, and then create menu.lst as follows:

Code:

title find and load IO.SYS of Windows 9x/Me
find --set-root /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys

***Dangermouse*** · #9 3rd December 2010, 09:42 AM

Quote:

The ultimate goal is to make the hard disk bootable and copy Windows installation files to the disk, then run the Windows installer from the hard disk.

Probably missing something here

but why can you not do that by plugging it into one of your fedora machines.

***glennzo*** · #10 3rd December 2010, 10:28 AM

I suppose I could. Here's the plan with this machine. It is a very old laptop. Pretty useless by today's standards, no wireless, no bootable USB, no floppy, no CDROM. It is a Dell PP01S so it's not very powerful. As a project, my adult son wants to install the Google Chrome OS (I know I previously said Windows) on it. He figures that it will probably run well on this low spec machine and if so it would be a neat little toy to take with him wherever he goes. Sort of like a modern day Netbook or something. This is why we're trying to at least get it to boot to a command prompt. We figure once there, installing an OS by copying all the installation files to the disk will be a breeze. We can just run setup. There is no OS on the disk at the moment. Last night I created a 30GB partition (the whole disk) using GParted and that's where it stands.

FWIW, I do like the GRUB4DOS idea. Maybe I'll look into that ??

***GallComp*** · #11 3rd December 2010, 01:07 PM

Did you heard of FreeDOS. It has all the goodies of previous DOS, and you can use it to make that HD bootable, then copy whatever files you want...

http://www.freedos.org/

***glennzo*** · #12 3rd December 2010, 01:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GallComp

Did you heard of FreeDOS. It has all the goodies of previous DOS, and you can use it to make that HD bootable, then copy whatever files you want...

http://www.freedos.org/

I've heard of it but it didn't cross my mind. Thanks for the heads up GallComp.

***glennzo*** · #13 4th December 2010, 10:21 AM

OK. I have time to revisit this subject. I've just downloaded the FreeDOS iso file and have burned a CD. Let's see what this has to offer.

10 minutes later: Don't think this will work for me. I don't believe that FreeDOS sees the laptop hard disk since it's attached to my computer via USB adapter.

***Dangermouse*** · #14 4th December 2010, 11:21 AM

I think ive been at the beer to much

, but why would you need dos etc.. to make it bootable, why not just flag it bootable in gparted etc.. but couldnt you install your os (chrome?) on another machine with your usb adapter, as long as you dont do the first boot till plugged in the old laptop i see no reason why it wouldnt work..

***glennzo*** · #15 4th December 2010, 12:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dangermouse

I think ive been at the beer to much

, but why would you need dos etc.. to make it bootable, why not just flag it bootable in gparted etc.. but couldnt you install your os (chrome?) on another machine with your usb adapter, as long as you dont do the first boot till plugged in the old laptop i see no reason why it wouldnt work..

You haven't been at the beer to much

Since I've just installed gparted to play with this disk I'll try "flagging it as bootable'" and see where that leads. Got to get out of Vista first though.