China DOS Union

When using PQMAGIC, there may be errors in the hard disk partition table and FAT table due to power outages and other situations. Software such as DISKGEN and SPFDISK have very good effects in backing up partition tables. After backup, no matter how you change the hard disk partitions, it can restore to the previous number of partitions, but they cannot back up automatically; some software that can back up automatically cannot completely restore the partition table.

Is there any software that can automatically back up the hard disk partition table and FAT table under DOS?

I remember that SrcTools includes a tool for backing up the FAT table. Have you tried it? But it seems there's no tool for backing up the partition table in SRCTools.

diskman (now named diskgenius) is the best. It is a tool that integrates functions such as disk partitioning, formatting, sector modification/copying, hard disk partition table (HDPT) rebuilding/backing up, sector viewing, etc. Moreover, it is made by Chinese people, localized, and very easy to get started with. The old version of diskman is more than 180KB, and the new version of diskgenius is only more than 130KB, which can be installed on a floppy disk. It is quite cost-effective to make a bootable disk!

Bro, take a look. What people want is to achieve automatic backup in the command line. As far as I know, DiskGenius doesn't support command-line operations.

To walu: I checked some information online. The so-called backing up the partition table is to back up the master boot record (that is, MBR). But I'm very curious why the data backed up by DiskGen has a size of 2K. Is there something else?

Yes, other software only backs up the MBR which is 512 bytes. If the hard disk is partitioned more times after backup, using it to restore will be invalid; DISKGEN backs up more than 3K. If the hard disk is partitioned more times after backup, using it to restore will fully restore the hard disk to its original state. I think it not only backs up the MBR, but I don't know what else it backs up.

I estimate that he very likely also backed up the partition tables of each logical partition on the extended partition.

You'd better contact the software author directly and ask him to write a small program specifically for backing up and restoring the partition tables backed up by DiskGen.

Extract the old Jiang's Kvd (126K) separately, command line backup and restore...

The following is the statement quoted from xiaojun on 2004-3-19 1:42:11:
Take out Lao Jiang's Kvd (126K) alone, and back up and restore via command line...

Lao Jiang's stuff seems to only be able to back up to drive A.

First, subst can be used

The following is a quote from xiaojun on 2004-3-19 11:00:47:
First, subst can be used.

Subst is sometimes restricted. For example, it cannot point subst to a virtual disk or a network disk. It must point to a local hard disk. What if the local hard disk cannot write things?

The following is the speech of xiaojun on 2004-3-19 1:42:11:
Take out Lao Jiang's Kvd (126K) alone, command line backup and restore...

I have Kvdos of the Kv2004 version, which is more than 300K. Can you send me your 126K Kvdos?
Thank you.

The currently relatively perfect solution for backing up the partition table from the command line is probably to use Kvdos. I have already sent an email to the author of DiskGen, hoping that he can come up with a perfect solution.

The backup method of kvdos is always different from the two software DISKGEN and SPFDISK (I have tested it). I found that only these two software can restore the changes to the logical partitions. So for the partition table error caused by power - off when partitioning with PQMAGIC, only DISKGEN and SPFDISK are the best choices! It's a pity that there is no automatic backup found.

No way, I analyzed the backup files of kvdos and diskgen, and found that kvdos backs up much more things than diskgen, including all contents. And diskgen doesn't back up the partition table of the extended partition.

TO Climbing: Note that the partition table is different from the MBR. The information you referred to may be incorrect

But I tested on the virtual machine are like this.
You try like this:
a: Suppose a hard disk has partitions C and D. First, use DISKGEN to back up (press F9), then use PQMAGIC to change the size of partition D and create a new partition E. After restarting, use DISKGEN to restore (press F10) again. After restarting, you will find that the hard disk returns to only the situation of partitions C and D.
b: Suppose a hard disk has partitions C and D. First, use KVDOS2003/B to back up, then use PQMAGIC to change the size of partition D and create a new partition E. After restarting, use KVDOS2003/HDPT.DAT to restore. After restarting, you will find that the hard disk does not return to the situation of partitions C and D, and there are still partitions C/D/E.

This means that if the partition cannot be recognized due to power failure and other reasons when using PQMAGIC to partition, only DISKGEN (and SPFDISK) can restore the original partition, and KVD2003 and others are ineffective. (I also tested it on the virtual machine)