Question about booting from an external hard drive - China DOS Union Forum

I want to boot the machine from an external hard drive and use Ghost to install the system,
but I ran into a problem.
When I add the usb2.0 driver in config.sys, at the beginning when it detects the USB interface, the external hard drive disconnects briefly. At that point the system stops because it can't find the command.com file.

Later I loaded a virtual hard disk driver in config.sys, copied the drivers I needed and command.com to the virtual disk, and then used load.com to load the driver (because by then it has already gone past autoexec.bat and can't go back to config.sys to load the driver anymore). Although detection completes successfully, I found that the external hard drive capacity is only recognized as about 200MB, and all the folders inside are garbled.

But I'm sure it isn't a driver problem, because if I copy the driver to a floppy disk and boot from that, loading completes successfully.
If I don't load the driver, Ghost is extremely, extremely slow.

Does anyone know how to solve this?
What I mainly want is just this: have the external hard drive boot the machine and load the 2.0 driver.

I suggest not booting from the USB hard drive and then loading the USB driver for the USB hard drive again. That is equivalent to loading two USB drivers: one is the USB driver built into the motherboard BIOS, and the other is the USB driver loaded by config.sys. With two drivers present at the same time, conflicts can easily occur.

It's better to boot DOS from a floppy disk or hard disk and then load the USB driver, or after booting from the USB hard drive, don't load the USB driver again.

But many motherboards have a problem:
if you don't load the driver, the port speed gets reduced to USB 1.1 speed.
That makes system installation very slow.
And if I use a floppy disk to load it, I'd also have to keep a floppy drive around, which is very troublesome.

From some computers I've come across and other people's test results, if you boot from USB without loading a driver, the speed doesn't even reach USB 1.1 at all (USB 1.1 is about 1MB/sec read/write speed), but instead stays in an even slower USB mode.

Right now the industry is making a big show of eliminating floppy drives, but some important issues have not been handled very well (for example USB boot compatibility, needing to insert a floppy disk for F6 during XP installation, etc.), so I suggest that before motherboards completely solve this kind of problem, it's still better to keep a floppy drive.

Floor1　sikro	Posted 2006-04-22 00:26
初级用户　Posts 32　Credits 195　From Amway
I want to boot the machine from an external hard drive and use Ghost to install the system, but I ran into a problem. When I add the usb2.0 driver in config.sys, at the beginning when it detects the USB interface, the external hard drive disconnects briefly. At that point the system stops because it can't find the command.com file. Later I loaded a virtual hard disk driver in config.sys, copied the drivers I needed and command.com to the virtual disk, and then used load.com to load the driver (because by then it has already gone past autoexec.bat and can't go back to config.sys to load the driver anymore). Although detection completes successfully, I found that the external hard drive capacity is only recognized as about 200MB, and all the folders inside are garbled. But I'm sure it isn't a driver problem, because if I copy the driver to a floppy disk and boot from that, loading completes successfully. If I don't load the driver, Ghost is extremely, extremely slow. Does anyone know how to solve this? What I mainly want is just this: have the external hard drive boot the machine and load the 2.0 driver.

Floor2　fujianabc	Posted 2006-04-22 11:31
金牌会员　Posts 1,616　Credits 3,467
I suggest not booting from the USB hard drive and then loading the USB driver for the USB hard drive again. That is equivalent to loading two USB drivers: one is the USB driver built into the motherboard BIOS, and the other is the USB driver loaded by config.sys. With two drivers present at the same time, conflicts can easily occur. It's better to boot DOS from a floppy disk or hard disk and then load the USB driver, or after booting from the USB hard drive, don't load the USB driver again.

Floor3　sikro	Posted 2006-04-23 00:10
初级用户　Posts 32　Credits 195　From Amway
But many motherboards have a problem: if you don't load the driver, the port speed gets reduced to USB 1.1 speed. That makes system installation very slow. And if I use a floppy disk to load it, I'd also have to keep a floppy drive around, which is very troublesome.

Floor4　fujianabc	Posted 2006-04-23 12:05
金牌会员　Posts 1,616　Credits 3,467
From some computers I've come across and other people's test results, if you boot from USB without loading a driver, the speed doesn't even reach USB 1.1 at all (USB 1.1 is about 1MB/sec read/write speed), but instead stays in an even slower USB mode. Right now the industry is making a big show of eliminating floppy drives, but some important issues have not been handled very well (for example USB boot compatibility, needing to insert a floppy disk for F6 during XP installation, etc.), so I suggest that before motherboards completely solve this kind of problem, it's still better to keep a floppy drive.