Date   : Wed, 19 Apr 2006 09:52:08 +0100
From   : "David Harper" <dl.harper@...>
Subject: Re: CPFS and MOVE

Ian Wolstenholme wrote (and following up my own last post):

> I'll have to try that.  You used to be able to do
>
> format a: /f:720
>
> from the command prompt but it won't do that either.

It's crude, but a more reliable way if you want to format several disks is
to get hold of an old W-98 or W-Me start-up disk and boot to that (instead
of into XP). Since this creates a RAM disk on boot, and loads the format
program into it, you can then swap to this, replace the startup disk with
the disk(s) to format, and do it using the old program which will take this
option.

(You need to get hold of a genuine old system disk to do this. You cannot
create it from XP. You can format and check "Create MS-DOS start-up disk",
and the result will boot to the W-Me version of DOS (DOS 8) but it will not
contain any utilities. The appropriate ones do not exist in XP, so you
cannot even copy them to the disk, and you would have to have a FAT 
partition (or configure a memory disk) to use them in any case.)

David Harper