What can Bootword do?

Bootword provides simple and easy-to-use interface for managing contents of small area located on every floppy disk and is hidden for commonly used software. When saving data to this area disk's functionality is not altered in any way. It has still size 1.44MB (with no bad sectors), one can copy, delete and do other operations with files and folders like before. Hidden area's size is about 400 B so it can serve for storing telephone numbers, e-mail addreses, passwords and other personal data or short texts.

How does it work?

Floppy disk consists of sectors. First one has special name - boot sector. It contains 512 bytes of information about floppy disk itself and so called bootstrap routine. If there is floppy disk in mechanics when the computer is starting, BIOS executes this routine which causes operating system to start. If you are sure you won't boot from floppy disk, bootstrap routine can be omitted. This will free 438 bytes used by Bootword to store characters and data.

In case of unintentional boot from floppy disk used by Bootowrd you'll see only black screen and system will freeze. This can be improved by displaying the well known message:

Invalid system disk
Replace the disk and then press any key

However space for Bootword will be reduced to 347 bytes.

How safe stored data are?

Data saved with Bootword can be seen only when using software for displaying floppy disk's raw contents sector by sector. On that account they are encoded and access is controlled with password. Files and directories located on floppy disk stay unaltered and can be managed in the same way as before.

	Saved data can be destroyed
	when floppy disk is formatted when using disk utilities like ScanDisk or Norton DiskDoctor when boot sector is physically damaged

Requirements

Bootword was successfully tested on Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000. It hasn't been tested on Windows XP yet. However, as Windows XP extends Windows 2000, there shouldn't be any problems when running on this platform.

Windows NT/2000/XP: You must have administrative rights to allow Bootword access floppy disk with low-level functions.

Licence & Liability

Bootword is freeware. That is you can distribute and use it for your personal use or in commercial sphere for free.

Bootword developement is aimed to ensure its correct functionallity on the most versions of Windows operating system. It was succesfully tested on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000. However this is not a guarantee that Bootword is bug-free and that it will run correctly in any (even tested) environment.

Bootword is supplied "as-is", with no warranties expressed or implied. Petr Havlicek will not be liable for damage or loss of any kind while using or misusing this software. Installing and using Bootword signifies acceptance of this.