How to Create a DOS Floppy Diskette with RAM Drive Support from Windows XP

This article will explain how to create a bootable DOS floppy diskette with RAM drive support.  A RAM drive is, essentially, a drive letter assigned to a portion of physical memory.

Creating a DOS Floppy Diskette with RAM Drive Support

1. Create a bootable DOS floppy diskette, if you don't have one already.  If you need information on how to create this diskette, please refer to the article How to Create an MS-DOS Startup Disk From Windows XP.
   


2. Download the RAM drive software.
3. Extract the file XMSDSK.EXE from the RAM Drive archive, and put it on the floppy diskette.  If you are using the Compressed Folders feature of Windows XP, please refer to the Special Note for Opening ZIP Files Using Compressed Folders.
   
4. Using a text editor such as Notepad, edit (or create) the file AUTOEXEC.BAT on the floppy diskette, adding the following content:
   
   @echo off
   XMSDSK.EXE 1024 R: /C1 /T /Y

Where:


• 1024 specifies that the RAM drive will be 1,024 KB (1 MB) in size.
• R: specifies that the RAM drive will be assigned drive letter R:.
  
• /C1 specifies the use of a minimal cluster size for the RAM drive.
• /T specifies that memory for the RAM drive will be allocated in a top-down manner.
• /Y specifies that the RAM drive should be mounted without prompting.