1. How do I mount the drive?
2. Driver loading

I went over the DOS USB boot-disk procedure from start to finish to hopefully put together a simple guide to help people setup a similar disk of their own. The steps are pretty simple though so I tried to think where people would be having trouble and came up with a few items that people might be overlooking.

First off, some caveats and other notes:

Since you're booting off a diskette, whatever operating system you load with the disk has to able to read the file system on both the DataStor and your normal Hard Drive. We use a Windows98SE Boot Disk which means that Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP systems formatted with the NTFS file system CANNOT be read. The drives MUST be formatted with either FAT16 or FAT32 if a Windows98SE Boot Disk is used. If an older Boot Disk is used, FAT32 drives may not be accessible. Without some other software it is impossible to access NTFS drives with a Windows 98SE Boot Disk. I have heard such software exists, but I have never used it and don't know who makes it.

I have noticed that some problems can be avoided if the DataStor is left turned off during the boot-up process and then turned on after boot-up is complete. The USB driver will recognize the DataStor as soon as it is turned on and will assign a drive letter.

Some systems just seem to be incompatible for some unknown reason. It may be that they use a USB controller chip that is incompatible or something. We have had the best success with Dell and Micron systems, but even then some units don't seem to work with the USB DOS driver and will hang at boot-up and never boot properly. The majority however do work properly.

I guess it's so obvious it might be offensive to mention, but I guess it should be stated. This method only provides DOS level access to the DataStor. You will have no graphical interface to work with unless you launch some DOS file manager program. If you aren't familiar with working with files at a DOS level, this method is probably not for you.

These steps assume you know how to create a config.sys file using notepad or some other text editor and that you have some basic skills with Windows, DOS, etc.

I have never tried this USB DOS driver with a USB 2.0 controller; I have no idea if it would work. Every computer we use this on is a USB 1.1 controller.

Some older DataStor drives seem to be completely incompatible with this driver, the newer DataStor seem to all work fine though, assuming the computer has no problems.

Steps to setup disk:

1. Create a boot disk. This is done easily in Windows98 under Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs.

2. Delete any Config.sys and Autoexec.bat file that exists on the diskette (in WinXP and maybe other operating systems you have to turn off the "Hide Protected Operating system Files" option in order to view or change the autoexec.bat and config.sys files).

3. Copy the duce.exe file that you downloaded from the www.pocketec.net website to the root of the diskette.

4. Create a new config.sys in the root of the diskette with the line "device=a:\duse.exe"

5. Connect your DataStor to the USB port

6. With the DataStor turned off, boot the computer with the diskette in the drive.

7. When boot is finished, turn on the DataStor. Pay attention to the pop-up to see what drive letter was assigned to the DataStor.

8. Go to work copying files or launch the DOS program you are interested in.

Pretty simple really,

Allan

If you had set the drivers to load into hi-mem, please remove it. If you need to conserve space, please read the duseBYexample.pdf file found with the drivers. You can limit what the drivers load depending on what you need.

If you are not loading the drivers into hi-mem and are still having issues, you may need to update your BIOS. Please contact the BIOS manufacturer for latest BIOS updates.

If you updated the BIOS and still have issues, you may wish to try a different driver version. If you're still having difficulties, please contact our technical support team here.