HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, V2.1.8

The tool cannot reliable detect drive letters and disk sizes, and may format the wrong disk.




In this example:

The Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 is actually 984 MB and has drive letter U:

The Sandisk Cruzer 8.01 is 3854 MB and has drive letter N:

Selecting format of the Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 formatted the Sandisk Cruzer 8.01.


HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, V2.1.8 can be downloaded from HP in

http://h50178.www5.hp.com/local_drivers/17550/SP27608.exe

The file size is

2,074,384 bytes

and SHA1 is

A95DE23E245FB49471C834D8C9F44911F19A42E8

Running SP27608.exe will install the tool.

The tool can create a primary NTFS, FAT16 or FAT32 partition.

The MBR is a standard MBR with partition table, which boots active partition if present.

If "Create a DOS startup disk" is selected for a FAT16 or FAT32 partition, the partition will be set active, and the boot sector made type IO.SYS. The MS DOS files io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com must be available.

The boot disk will get BIOS disk number 128 (first hard disk), and the partition will get the C: drive letter at boot.

The tool cannot make a USB disk which will boot in floppy mode where the disk gets BIOS disk number 0, and the drive letter is A:

If "Create a DOS startup disk" is not selected, the boot sector will be type NTLDR, and the partition will not be made active.

DOS USB Floppy Boot

On my computer:

Write a 1,474,560 bytes bootable floppy image file to a USB disk sector by sector, beginning at sector 0.

The floppy content is visible in Windows.

Boot.

The computer hangs.

Make a copy of the image file, as example to the file dft.bin.

Do in a command box:

edit /64 dft.bin

Press insert to change to replace mode. Go to to line 1 col 27. The character will be ASCII 2.

Press space, which will change the ASCII value to 32.

Save the image file, and write it to the USB disk after verifying that the file size is still 1,474,560 bytes.

Boot, and use BIOS to select boot from USB.

It works.

Byte number 27 (offset 26) is the low byte of the FAT12 boot sector heads field. The BIOS on my computer will read the boot sector, and report the disk geometry using the heads and sectors values from the boot sector. Obviously for some reason, the BIOS will fail if the heads value is 2.

As long as the floppy content is not hard coded to assume a usual 2 heads, 18 sectors geometry, this method should work.

Windows PE USB Boot

Microsoft Windows PE is an operating system which can boot to command line from harddisk, USB disk, network or CD.

Windows PE is typically used for system maintenance. Another usage can be data recovery, where you as example boot Windows PE to a CD and copy files to a USB disk using data recovery programs.

Windows PE version 3.0 is available as part of "The Windows® Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows® 7". The current download is in the file "KB3AIK_EN.iso", 1,789,542,400 bytes, date published 8/6/2009, SHA1 793F4CC4741EBAD223938BE0EEEE708EDA968DAA.

The user has to build the Windows PE boot media following instructions in the documentation. As example a bootable iso image is not included.

Windows PE can boot from a USB disk if the BIOS supports USB boot, but only in Windows PE ram disk mode. For BIOS versions from before about 2006 you have to know how. If not, you will get the error message:

"An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data."

Mobile Internet

The most important purpose of computers and Internet is to keep people away from the streets and take their money, so they do not disturb in real life.

With mobile Internet we however have a problem.

It is difficult to suggest a solution. Until a solution may be found, it is important to keep the price of mobile Internet high, so the real world can be compensated.

Mozilla Firefox javascript dialog box

When visiting a malware site in Mozilla Firefox, the thing you want to do is to close the tab.

The site however displays a javascript dialog box, and you cannot do anything in Firefox until you clicked this dialog box. It of course will make no difference whether you click OK, cancel or close.

The only alternative is to open Windows task manager and do "End task" for Firefox.