I think the preload is probably the best solution. The DOS that comes with Win9x wasn't designed with any USB devices in mind. The only reason input devices work is that they're controlled by the BIOS.
Yeah I know what you’re saying... I meant to copy DOS onto the drive over USB on a modern machine first of all and then swap the HDD over to the old machine and run setup etc.
You don't really need to use a partition manager to make disk bootable.
All you need to do is simple connect USB HDD to your desktop PC, go to Windows Start and hold right click on Disk Management and you will see USB HDD partition. You can formatting USB HDD as FAT32 then after that, just right click on USB HDD partition and click on Mark Partition as Active that will make your USB HDD bootable.
https://macrorit.com/partition-magic-manager/set-active-partition-diskpart-command-line.html
Excellent thank you. I didnt quite grasp how exactly I would do it but that clarifies things a lot thank you. Still a partition manager though right
