Late to the party

User discussion and information resource forum for BootIt Bare Metal and BootIt UEFI
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rustleg
Posts: 136
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:01 pm

Late to the party

Post by rustleg »

Following TB's email update today I discovered Bootit UEFI! If it's what I think it is, I'm overjoyed. I had understood back in 2014 that UEFI spelled the end for Bootit because the MBR "trick" would no longer be possible, i.e. hiding the EMBR code in the MBR allowed the program to exist without being seen or altered by any of the OS's.

On the strength of that belief I bought a new PC although my existing machine still had some years of life left in it. I wanted an up to date model that would run using the MBR partitioning system and would have as long a life as possible. As far as I am concerned BIBM and IFW/IFD/IFL are fundamental to the way I want to run multiple operating systems that don't interfere with each other and can be easily imaged in case of wanting to wind back from a bad update.

I had thought I was on a dead-end path and might have to consider using VMs in future. So now I am hoping that I will be able to run a machine using GPT and UEFI and still get the benefit of Terabyte's multi-booting.

So a few questions if I may:

1. Can I set up OS's which will be blocked from seeing or using other partitions which might contain operating systems? In other words, can I set it up so that it is impossible for Windows using one partition to see/use/reformat/modify some other Ext4 partition that I have a Linux system on (without me doing it deliberately)? At present my Windows systems see these Linux partitions as unpartitioned disk space, and they haven't attempted to use that space. Also I have 2 Windows systems and don't want them to see each other.

2. Can I have a common partition accessible to multiple different OS's? I use this arrangement for my data. Currently I keep Windows and programs on a C: partition and have all my personal docs on a D: partition. Each Linux also uses the data (D) partition (formatted NTFS).

3. Are there any notable restrictions on using Bootit UEFI compared to Bootit BM?

4. While I'm asking I noticed also IFU. I currently use IFL on a separate partition as it's much quicker than IFD. (I presume IFL is quicker because it has access to much more RAM). Is IFU as quick as IFL?

My joy will be long lasting if these questions get favourable answers. However, in any case, without waiting, I upgraded today to Bootit Collection anyway as I want to keep supporting TB and I might use the UEFI version in the future although I have no need to do it at present. Long may you prosper and keep on providing excellent software.
Bob Coleman
Posts: 785
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:58 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by Bob Coleman »

rustleg wrote:

> 4. While I'm asking I noticed also IFU. I currently use IFL on a separate
> partition as it's much quicker than IFD. (I presume IFL is quicker because
> it has access to much more RAM). Is IFU as quick as IFL?
>

No extensive experience or benchmarking here, but last night I created a BIU UFD, booted it and used the integrated disk imaging (IFU) to create an image.

Subjective feeling is that the time required to create the image is on a par with IFD, not IFL,
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by DrTeeth »

rustleg,

GPT does nothing for me. I have 3 2TB drives in my main PC. I have
9distros and two windows installs on my OS drive and it is just over
half full.

I only have one PC here that is GPT and once I back it up will have a
play at converting it to MBR. Cor blimey! There are 4-5 partitions
just for one OS. To me that is too messy for me. I have come across a
program that seems to do it at the press of a button so that will be
my first port of call.

When I get my next PC (I design it and get it built do there are no
warranty issues) I will specify that the BIOS must be set up to boot
legacy disks.

There is no problem at all moving Vista, Win7, 8 ,8.1 or 10 OSs to
different hardware. Same goes for Linux too. TBH, I'll be dead before
I will *need* GPT. Playing and experimenting with it is another
matter.

--
Cheers,

DrT

"If you want to find out what is wrong
with democracy, spend five minutes with
the average voter". - Winston Churchill
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by TeraByte Support »


To convert it, you simply run the "CHGDTYPE.TBS" script.

"DrTeeth" wrote in message news:15410@public.bootitbm...

rustleg,


I only have one PC here that is GPT and once I back it up will have a
play at converting it to MBR. Cor blimey! There are 4-5 partitions
just for one OS. To me that is too messy for me.
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by DrTeeth »

On Sun, 29 Jul 2018 13:18:10 EDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
"TeraByte Support" disturbed my
reverie and wrote:

>To convert it, you simply run the "CHGDTYPE.TBS" script.

I will definitely give that a go as it will be the first time I would
have used the OS deployment suite. I trust TBH more than the other
program I was going to use so that script will be my first course of
action.
--
Cheers,

DrT

"If you want to find out what is wrong
with democracy, spend five minutes with
the average voter". - Winston Churchill
Bob Coleman
Posts: 785
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:58 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by Bob Coleman »

DrTeeth wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Jul 2018 13:18:10 EDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
> "TeraByte Support" disturbed my
> reverie and wrote:
>
> >To convert it, you simply run the "CHGDTYPE.TBS" script.
>
> I will definitely give that a go as it will be the first time I would
> have used the OS deployment suite. I trust TBH more than the other
> program I was going to use so that script will be my first course of
> action.
> --
> Cheers,
>
> DrT

I did such a conversion over a year ago with "CHGDTYPE.TBS". There were originally some problems, but eventually it worked. All described at viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2547
DrTeeth
Posts: 1289
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:58 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by DrTeeth »

Thanks for the extra information.
--
Cheers,

DrT

"If you want to find out what is wrong
with democracy, spend five minutes with
the average voter". - Winston Churchill
tas3086
Posts: 317
Joined: Mon Mar 19, 2012 6:15 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by tas3086 »

I tried chgdtype.tbs a month or so ago with little success. It would not boot. I then tried the windows mbr2gpt.exe utility which took a little bit longer to run, but worked perfectly. I think that it spent a lot of time fiddling with the windows bcd boot file. (at least a lot of messages about what it was doing!)

I did not read that other post when I had the problem. I might give it a try again after I read it. Just an FYI
Bob Coleman
Posts: 785
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 5:58 pm

Re: Late to the party

Post by Bob Coleman »

tas3086 wrote:
> I tried chgdtype.tbs a month or so ago with little success. It would not
> boot. I then tried the windows mbr2gpt.exe utility which took a little
> bit longer to run, but worked perfectly. I think that it spent a lot of
> time fiddling with the windows bcd boot file. (at least a lot of messages
> about what it was doing!)
>
> I did not read that other post when I had the problem. I might give it a
> try again after I read it. Just an FYI

Just to emphasize that the experience I referenced was converting GPT to MBR (maybe EMBR, I don't remember). I too have been unsuccessful attempting to convert MBR to GPT with CHGDTYPE.TBS.
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