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I used Startup Disk Creator to create an image of FreeDOS. My pen drive has 4gb. Freedos image has 1,4Mb. After burning the pen drive with this image I can't copy additional files because the Startup Disk Creator limits the pen drive to the size of the image.

Context: I want to use FreeDOS to upload a BIOS of an old computer. In two different sources, they recommended creating an image of FreeDOS and then I needed to copy the Bios .exe file to the root of the image created.

Guilherme Parreira
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The problem is probably 'only' that you have a partition table and a file system, that is not made for storage. You can use a tool to create a fresh partition table and a file system for storage. You can do that with gparted. You may have to install it,

sudo apt update && sudo apt install gparted

If still problems, you can use mkusb, which has an option to create a simple partition table with a FAT32 file system. This can work even when other tools cannot manage the drive.

After that it should be possible not only to store files, but gparted can create several different file systems.

If you intend to use the drive only with Linux, I suggest that you use a Linux filesystem, for example ext4.

If you want the drive to be compatible with Windows you can use the old standard FAT32 (with max file size 4 GiB) or the newer file systems NTFS or exFAT without file size limits.

Links:

Can't format my usb drive. I have already tried with mkdosfs and gparted

How do I copy a file larger than 4GB to a USB flash drive?

sudodus
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  • With gparted I couldn't copy the file. With mkusb I was able to burn the img and copy the BIOS file. However, there was an error in boot, and I could not update the BIOS. – Guilherme Parreira Mar 30 '24 at 11:58
  • How big is the exe file (that should update the BIOS)? I downloaded FD13-FullUSB.zip, extracted FD13FULL.img, cloned it to a pendrive and there are 141 516 800 bytes free in C: Do you need more free space? If there is a boot problem, did you boot in BIOS mode alias CSM alias legacy mode (not in UEFI mode)? – sudodus Mar 30 '24 at 15:01
  • If C: is too small (not enough space for the exe file), you can use gparted to create a second partition with FAT32, with a size that uses all remaining drive space 'behind' the first partition (C: in DOS, /dev/sdx1 in Ubuntu). That should be approximately 3.5 GB, enough for the exe file. I checked that FREEDOS can see (read and write files using) such a second partition on the USB drive. Its drive letter may be D: or E: or ... depending on what other FAT file systems there are in the computer. For example, an EFI system partition may be seen as D: – sudodus Mar 30 '24 at 15:44