Instructions For Writing The Basic DOS Boot Disk Image File
A
disk image is a file that contains the state in which a physical disk
existed at some point in time. They have many purposes, but the most
common use is to write copies of a disk after it's been configured in a
certain way with certain files, so as to assure that it will stay
configured that way with a minimum of effort.
It takes special software to write a disk image back to a disk. Two popular programs that can be used to do this include rawrite and dd. Both programs do the same thing, but in slightly different ways. dd,
at least, has its roots in Unix-based systems, where it can perform all
kinds of neat tricks. I don't know as much about the history of rawrite and its companion program, rawread.
Both programs are provided here because rawrite is a DOS program and therefore will not run on 64-bit Windows operating systems. The version of dd provided here will, so if you're using 64-bit Windows, it's what you want to use.
Basically, what you need to do is something like this: put the disk
image file in a folder (directory) on your computer that you can find
from the command line). Then put one or the other utilities with it.
Users of 32-bit operating systems may use either dd or rawrite. Users with 64-bit operating systems must use dd.
For rawrite, type in the following after moving to the directory where you put the files: rawrite -d A -f miniboot.ima. The disk will be written after you confirm that this is what you wish to do.
If you are using dd, it works this way: dd if=miniboot.ima of=\\.\a: bs=18k.
Not Using Windows?
If you're not using Windows, you may have a utility provided with your
operating system that can write disk image files to disk(s). Most Unix,
Linux and related operating systems ship with dd included at the very least.
If you've got a copy of WinImage, it too can easily write the boot disk image.
Finished?
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