Rued64 wrote:
> > What is the best way to go with BootIt, if you have a drive >2TB (therefore GPT) and want to use BootIt as bootmanager?
You'd want to have your OSes on a drive <2TiB (or otherwise only get use of 2TiB on that drive) while having your data on the larger drive.
> > - Does this still makes sense or should we go for UEFI- or Windows based bootmanagers?
You'd only be able to do that for basically W8/10 at the current time.
> > Is it possible to use (E)MBR and GPT drives simultaneously (e.g. SSD as EMBR and HDD as GPT)?
Yes.
> - Can BootIt be installed on the SSD in this scenario and can it boot partitions on the hdd (GPT) as well?
No. it will boot the partition on a drive using MBR/EMBR
> - Should the M/B run in pure UEFI in this case or legacy mode (BIOS)?
UEFI mode loads a file to boot instead of loading the MBR to boot.
>
> What is the issue, that BootIt BM cannot be installed on GPT drives?
Be pointless currently, since it wouldn't boot anything on the GPT drive. It can't boot the partition in most cases, it has to load the file and adjust whatever other files the kernel loader uses for the particular OS.
> Will there be a release in near future being compatible with GPT drives?
Can't say never, but for multi-booting, not in the next month.
> - If not, what about the so called "hybrid-mbr" (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Part ... 28LBA_0.29 ; last paragraph) partitioning?
hybrid boot is not currently supported and would have to be tested if an OS would even honor it.
> Work-around: Can BootIT BM installed on a USB stick holding boot data (what is normally stored in the EMBR partition: boot partition, partitions visible, etc.)?
Yes, if the BIOS boots it like a HD and will actually boot in in legacy mode, you can even use the one you created with makedisk, just remove the news.hlp file and that changes it from an install type boot disk to an installed version style.
> > What about the imaging programs: Are there any restrictions concerning saving/restoring GPT partitions or drives?
No restrictions.
> - Can those images be used to cross the two types, e.g. from MBR to GPT?
Yes, the partitions individually can be restored, but if you do an entire drive backup/restore the partitioning will match whatever you backed up.
> What about those UEFI features as Fast Startup? What is the issue here? I'd like to roughly understand what's happening (I think BootIT BM users have to...)
There is a link at the top of the forum that summary.
> Same for Rapid Boot...
You mean the drives that have a cache to speed up reads. Provide it's transparent, it can't conflict with anything.
>
> > ...and may be for other stuff like Secure Boot, TPM, etc. Any restrictions?
> Anything to consider here?
You can boot IFL/IFW with Secure Boot for systems that have the MS certificate that they sign it with available (surface pro hasn't in the past which means you'd have to disable secure boot to boot IFL). If by TPM, you mean the older/better method of locking down the boot code, you could set the MBR to whatever code you want then lock it down.
>
> > Last-but-not-least: UEFI seems to make the run, regardless of its security/privacy issues
> (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_E ... #Criticism). Or not?
"Make the run"? Not sure what you mean.
> - What are your recommendations? Stay at BIOS? Use leagacy (BIOS) mode? Coreboot,
> etc.? What is the future also in combination with BootIt products?
You can stay with the BIOS, it's fine. The device interface is the same, the only difference is how you make the call to the BIOS/UEFI to read/write. Right now full apps under UEFI can be problematic since so many bugs in so many UEFI implementations. Hopefully that gets better over time... In reality, UEFI should be done with the best/fastest interface with stable ability to handle all the devices and hot swapping, then you can have a lot of OSes built on top of it to provide a hardware independent interface to the OS, just like DOS was on top of the BIOS. But they seem to go out of the way to make sure that isn't the case.