Create a System Disk


A good, valid system disk is invaluable in the event of an emergency. Taking a few minutes to create a good one is a good idea.

A system disk is diskette with Windows system files and necessary setup files. Its purpose is to be able to boot your system in the event that the hard drive fails to do so. It is also used to setup a hard drive.

To create a good system disk, follow the steps here:

·         Find a blank floppy diskette and stick it in Drive A.

·         In Windows Explorer, right-click on A:, then choose format.

·         Click on full format, and check Copy System Files.

·         Click OK. It should start to format. Make sure the disk isn't write-protected. If it is, Windows will tell you.

·         When done, you will probably have COMMAND.COM, DRVSPACE.BIN, IO.SYS, and MSDOS.SYS on the disk. But you want more to make the disk truly useful.

·         Copy FDISK.EXE, FORMAT.COM, EDIT.COM, REGEDIT.EXE, UNINSTALL.EXE, SYS.COM, SCANDISK.INI, CHKDSK.EXE, and ATTRIB.EXE to the diskette. Some of these files are not really necessary, but may be of help in certain situations. Also, adding MSCDEX.EXE and SBCD.SYS or some variants for your CD-ROM can be useful in case your hard drive fails, and you need these drivers to reinstall your Operating System from scratch on a new drive.

·         If there are any other files you think should be there, by all means, copy them over.

·         Remove the diskette from the drive.

·         Flip the write-protect latch over to keep this disk from being corrupted.