!DOS on USB key bit me
 --- 
agk's diary 
03 August 2026
 --- 
written on HP 200LX (1994) with memo editor
while the girls play with play-doh in the kitchen
 --- 
I'll probably write on more than DOS topics soon. I
backpacked 50 km with my 75-year-old dad, my third-
party's candidate for US Senate made a major speech
in the same forum as his Republican and Democrat
opponents, and I celebrated 19 years sober. But the
scrapers finding their way through https gateways to
gopherspace are giving me pause. So DOS it is.

My kindergarten-age kid got really into keeping a
daily diary, using SvarDOS's native editor. She
laboriously wrote a line each day, under the date,
like this:

Saturday, July 26, 2026
I had a good time at memaw and popas.  [ie. papa's;
                                      her grandpa's]

Well, sadly, I didn't back up her diary or my to-do
list. Evy unplugged the netbook it was running on,
which has no battery, and most of the filesystem,
including the docs folder where those textfiles
lived, became corrupted and unreadable.

I wish I knew how to try to recover corrupted files
and folders from DOS on a USB stick. I wonder if I'm
the only person in the world with this problem?

I'm glad it happened, because none of my interested
friends have started writing their next novel with
a word processor on DOS booted from a USB stick--yet.
I would like to make it a more robust system before
any of my friends entrust something irreplaceable to
it.

I have two ideas, but don't know how to do either,
nor do I have time to hack for the next few weeks.
So my suggestion box is open.

Idea 1: Partition the USB drive. Call the system
partition C:\ and the second partition A:\.
Encourage regular backups from the C drive to the A
drive.

Idea 2: Make the C drive read-only. A reboot will
fix any ill. Maybe divide the USB stick into three
partitions--read-only C:\ loads into RAM, A:\ for
docs and data, and F:\ for backups.

While DOS doesn't like hotplugged USBs, the BIOS can
handle what's there at boot. I can partition a USB
stick and see if I can see both partitions. I don't
know how to make a filesystem read-only and booted 
into RAM.

When I have hacking time, I guess I'll be doing this
next, instead of the Free Thinker's ideas about how
to make an instant-booting serial, telnet, or ssh 
terminal from tiny core on a USB stick. That's up
next, once the word processor stick is stable. Then
the BBS-over-LoRa.

Sometimes it feels like projects that take you a
weekend take me years. But I'm a mom and a nurse,
and an amateur at most everything else.