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BootAble – FreeDOS boot testing freeware
To obtain direct, low-level access to a system's mass storage drives, SpinRite runs under a GRC-customized version of FreeDOS which has been modified to add compatibility with all file systems. In order to run SpinRite it must first be possible to boot FreeDOS.
GRC's “BootAble” freeware allows anyone to easily create BIOS-bootable media in order to workout and confirm the details of getting a machine to boot FreeDOS through a BIOS. Once the means of doing that has been determined, the media created by SpinRite can be booted and run in the same way.
The participants here, who have taken the time to share their knowledge and experience, their successes and some frustrations with booting their computers into FreeDOS, have created a valuable knowledgebase which will benefit everyone who follows.
You may click on the image to the right to obtain your own copy of BootAble. Then use the knowledge and experience documented here to boot your computer(s) into FreeDOS. And please do not hesitate to ask questions – nowhere else can better answers be found.
(You may permanently close this reminder with the 'X' in the upper right.)
Just to be clear, if the name of it isn't, that InitDisk is NOT a data recovery tool like SpinRite. It merely attempts to revive the disks ability to store a filesystem, and then applies one.... causing whatever data was present to be lost. If your old dead SSD has somehow had its partition table screwed up in a way that it was unusable, say, then InitDisk may be helpful.
Yes it's incredibly good at the job, just remember it will be a blank dusk once it's done.
It took me a while to find and undust an old windows machine in order to try the utility. In the end initdisk did not revive my dead SSD. I like it nonetheless. It seems to be a useful utility to reformat some old "who knows what's on it" flash drives.
Sometimes we are in a situation when a friend or a family member hands over a usb drive asking for a copy of a random photo or a file. Would it be safe to assume that initdisk prevents any potentially malicious code to infect our computer when we use it to reformat a drive? In other words, can I safely use initdisk to reformat a drive which I randomly found in a parking lot
Cheers,
Even after formatting, you could still be a victim of malicious firmware. Fire up your favorite search engine and look up "USB devices malicious firmware"
In Linux I'm pretty sure you can write to any block device with just a few commands... I'd be surprised if such a tool didn't already exist, just not with a lot of fanfare.
Actually that's no longer the default behavior @AlanD. You have to request the DOS install with a command line option.
Have you tried using dd to write zeros to the beginning of the disk? Something like:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1024 count=128Afterward use cfdisk like normal. I have yet to find a disk I couldn't repartition after using this method. When I do, I'll definitely give initdisk a shot.
Similarly, on Windows I have had great success with the diskpart "clean" command.
Thank you replying, but I have looked at that originally and unfortunately it has no lock switch.
Steve, that would be great. The drive is a Kingston 32 Gb Data Traveller.
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