NASLite Network Attached Storage

A simple suggestion... beside where it talks about fdformat on the website simply say

"rawwrite will not work with ANY NASLite images"

I spent too much time before i even thought to check for rawwrite on the forum as I assumed it just worked (like it always has in days of old)

Cheers

As you might gather from my post here:
http://www.serverelements.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=64

The problem is NOT with Rawrite, it is with Rawrite NT.

jaclaz

i understand that ...

but since the majority of users worldwide now use a NT based version of windows I thought it not worth the extra words.

But since you insist:

"rawwrite on NT based versions of windows (e.g. NT, XP, 2003) will not work with ANY NASLite images. rawwrite will work with 9x versions of windows (e.g. 95, 08, ME) "

.

Sorry, I did not mean to be rude or anything.

As I see it, the warning on this page:
http://www.serverelements.com/naslite.php


Should be enough to let people let know that.

The scope of my post above referred was to point out that:
1) It is impossible to make NASLite v1.x floppy disk in Windows NT/2000/XP
2) It is perfectly possible to do it under plain DOS or Win9x/ME
3) I made a brief tutorial to that effect

Quite frankly, I reckon that the info about making the disk under DOS should be put on the main page, or that my original post could be stickied in the forum to avoid people losing their time like unfortunately you did.

I did not test the procedure under freedos (theoretically should work).

A procedure to test, and I cannot do it as I do not run XP, is finding out if it is possible to use the procedure on an all NTFS XP machine making the DOS boot floppy like described here:
http://www.petri.co.il/create_dos_boot_ ... ows_xp.htm
adding to the floppy the required
DCOPY 2.8 FAST by Jorgen Bosman
http://users.pandora.be/jbosman/applications.html
and the FREEWARE for personal use NTFS driver from Datapol
NTFS4DOS
http://www.datapol.de/dpe/freeware/index.html
to access the NASlite image stored on a NTFS Hard Disk

jaclaz

excellent information, i could not agree more.

This NT rawwrite bug is the worst possible type because it looks like it works, tells you that it works and then partially boots. Not obvious that rawwrite was the culprit.

Id also suggest some good old MD5 sums of the images as well

kudos

The version of rawwrite I was trying to use (both the dos command line version from the command prompt in XP and the gui version) threw and error when attempting to write to the floppy under XP.

Another option would be to simply burn the naslite disk image to a CD and boot using a Win 9x boot disk with CD ROM drivers. (Or make the CD bootable.) Then use rawwrite to write the image from CD to disk.

Barring that, the next best thing would be to download and burn a linux LiveCD (such as knoppix) then use the instructions for using fdformat and dd from linux to create your disk.

Or you could take the route I choose--I simply 'borrowed' one of the linux boxes at my workplace for about five minutes...


--lgm-

yup thats what i did eventually (although Ubuntu does not support the disk size)

Also in XP SP2 rawwrite NT gave errors 50% of the time and 50% said OK. I incorectly put this down to dodgy floppy disks

@levi

READ my post here:
http://www.serverelements.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=64

As said before, it is NOT POSSIBLE to do it under NT based systems,
(points 1 and 4)

It is possible from DOS, but NOT with RAWRITE for DOS only.
(point 5)


There is a link to a tool that WORKS (under DOS).
(point 6)

jaclaz

this is indeed an excellent post however its not really anything to do with this thread (no flame intended).

I created this thread to suggest clearer notices on the website of Rawwrite compatibilty although it would be good to point to your thread from the website also.

I should also reinterate that whilst Rawrtite on NT never creates a viable image much of the time it actually says it worked.

This is worse than not working as it tricks users who have not searched the fourm (and why should they think they needed to if it says it works) into thinking it is a floppy error.

As i said this thread could be closed with the addition of a link and a few words on the webpage.

The webpage has stated the following since day 1. This topic has been covered in extreme detail in the past, there's no need for anymore discussion until a viable option under windows is available.

>The above should work under any UNIX provided the appropriate device is used. We have not found a way for making a NASLite v1.x floppy disk in Windows NT/2000/XP. If you are using Windows NT/2000/XP, then the NASLite v1.x Floppy Disk Utility CD-ROM is the best way to create the 1722 kB NASLite v1.x floppy disks