Making a spare boot up floppy

Barry Yu barryyupuilee at sbcglobal.net
Sun Mar 28 17:10:14 UTC 2004


1. I made a bootup floppy with     mkbootdisk `uname -r`   in a fat16 format floppy and tested it - it works fine.
2. I copied all the files in this floppy into my data partition(Fat32)  with   cp /mnt/floppy/*  /mnt/f32_data/ ,
    used   ls -l  /mnt/f32_data and can see them all in new place; 
        boot.msg
        initrd.img
        ldlinux.sys
        syslinux.cfg
        vmlinuz
3. And then I used another new floppy which formatted in f16 and copied all files from data partition into it by 
    cp /mnt/f32_data/*    /mnt/floppy  (This is the second new floppy), used ls -l can seen them all (5 files) in the floppy.
4. I used this second floppy ( all 5 files I copied from  /mnt/f32_data/ ) to boot FC1 and I saw the message;
    "Non-System disk or disk error. Replace and press any key when ready" - This floppy simply just can't boot!
5. I used this same floppy and boot up into FC1, issued commad     mkbootdisk `uname -r`, and then I used it to boot,
    it works - This indicated that the floppy itself physically is useable.
6. I compared files in the bootable floppy and contents in my f32_data folder that has the files  boot.msg, initrd.img, 
        ldlinux.sys, syslinux.cfg, vmlinuz, both file names and file size are absolutely the same. The result tells one thing;
        Only the floppy made by FC1 with bootdisk `uname -r' is bootable, if you transfer or copy files in this floppy into 
        another floppy even the files are there afterwards, the new floppy is not bootable.
I want copy all contents in the bootable floppy into my data storage partition, and copy them back into a blank floppy in case I need - I had bad experience in open a blend new box of floppy and 3 consecutive floppy even not workable at all! I must prepare if the current boot floppy one day is gone. Moreever, I really want to know above copy process what have I missed that caused the new floppy not bootable even with correct contents in it (At least I can't see what I had missed).
Thanks for helping.
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