The Drive Fitness Test (DFT) application is designed to run under native DOS (i.e. not a DOS window of any OS) and is distributed as an executable file DFT32-Vxxx.exe (where xxx may vary). You will need to follow one of the procedures below to prepare a test diskette.

The Drive Fitness Test set-up program ( DFT32-Vxxx.exe ) includes IBM PC DOS2000 and the Drive Fitness Test Utility. In order to run the set-up program you will need to have a formatted 1.44-MB diskette and access to a system that is running one of the following operating systems, Windows'95, Windows'98, Windows Millennium, Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Running the set-up program creates an IBM PC DOS2000 bootable diskette that contains the Drive Fitness Test and all required supporting programs.
It is recommended that before starting the set-up program, all open Windows applications should be closed.

The following represents two examples of how the DFT diskette can be created once the DFT program has been installed. It can be downloaded here..

• Method A.
  1. Insert a formatted diskette into the Floppy drive, (A: or B:).
  2. Using Windows Explorer, locate the program DFT32-Vxxx.exe
  3. To start diskette creation, double-click on the program icon and follow the on screen instructions. Note: you have the option to select your country location and keyboard layout, the default for these options is United States.
• Method B.
  1. Click Start, then select Run.
  2. Click the Browse button to locate the DFT32-Vxxx.exe set-up program.
  3. Click on the filename, then click Open.
  4. Click OK to run the DFT32-Vxxx.exe set-up program.
  5. . Insert a formatted 1.44-MB diskette into the required floppy drive ( A or B if your system has 2 floppy drives ), select the target floppy on the set-up screen then click next to continue.
  6. Follow the on screen instructions.
• Method C
  A CD-image of DFT can be downloaded here. Any CD burner can use this image to make a bootable CD containing DFT.

There are extra requirements for SCSI drives.

The Drive Fitness Test image file (e.g. DFT-v300img.bin) includes IBM PC DOS2000 and the Drive Fitness Test. The name of the image file will change according to the release version of DFT.
Running the Linux Disk Dump (DD) utility creates an IBM PC DOS 2000 bootable diskette that contains the Drive Fitness Test Utility.
A formatted 1.44-MB diskette is required to create the DFT diskette.

To create the bootable DFT diskette under Linux:

1. Download the DFT image file (DFT-v3xximg.bin) into a known directory on your PC.
2. Insert a formatted 1.44-MB diskette into your floppy disk drive.
3. Make sure that the floppy disk is un-mounted.
4. Change directory to where you saved the DFT image.
5. Run the Disk Dump (DD) utility with the following parameters:

   DD if=dft-v3xximg.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=8k

6. The bootable DFT diskette will now be created, Note this could take a couple of minutes.

To test SCSI drives DFT requires a DOS loadable ASPI manager for the SCSI Controller that the drives are attached to. Note: Some ASPI managers offer support only for removable media devices e.g. CD-ROM's, Tape etc. check the documentation that was supplied with your SCSI controllers or contact your SCSI controller supplier to see if this is the type of ASPI managers you have. DFT is supplied with ASPI managers that support several different types of SCSI controllers. Check here for the list, if your SCSI controller is not listed you will need to obtain a DOS ASPI manager that supports your controller. Check the software supplied with your controller or visit the web page of your controller manufacturer.

Having obtained a DOS loadable ASPI manager you will need to update the DFT diskette as follows,

1. Copy the ASPI manager program(s) to the ASPI sub-directory on the diskette.
2. Using a text editor (e.g. Notepad, Wordpad etc.) edit the file Config.sys on the diskette to include the ASPI manager under the SCSI heading.
   

   e.g. DEVICE=A:\ASPI\abcdef.sys where adcdef.sys is the name of your ASPI manager.

   (Your controller documentation should detail how to add a ASPI manager to a configuration file).