Problem while creating floppy disk

Question

I am going through BrokenThorn Operating System Development Series. I am trying to create virtual floppy using steps provided there. Steps are :

We will use VFD to create a virtual floppy image to copy our OS to. This will explain how to use it.

1. Open vfdwin.exe.
2. Under the Driver tab, Click the Start button. This starts the driver.
3. Click either the Drive0 or Drive1 tab.
4. Click Open

Insure Media Type is a standard 3.5" 1.44 MB floppy, and disk type is in RAM. Also, insure Write Protect is disabled. Click "Create".

Go to My Computer (On *your* computer ;) ) and you should see a new floppy drive.

To format the disk, right click the drive and go to Properties. Under the VFD Tab will be a format option.

Here the problem is I can't find the VFD tab in properties. When I proceed further and use partcopy :

partcopy Boot1.bin 0 200 -f0

I get the error message

Failed to write destination at offset 0

I can't understand what the problem is? Can anybody help please? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The simple answer is that the VFD is formatted when created. It can be reformatted with the format button on the Drive0 or Drive1 tabs. It can also be formatted the same as a real drive - right click, Format...

PartCopy writes directly to the drive and does not require the drive to be formatted.

The -f0 parameter specifies Drive0 - typically drive a: which in VFD is selected on the Drive0 tab "Drive Letter:" "Change..." button.

The happy answer is that ImDisk (which incorporates VFD) unlike VFD also works on Win64.