Install Bootit to EMBR drive

[phil_tb]

I have bought a 1TB NVME SSD and I am trying to install Bootit on it. All other hard drives have been removed from the computer.

I set the bios to legacy boot and installed Bootit BM. I can then boot the SSD. Partition work shows there is an 8MB Bootit EMBR partition and that is the entire drive. i.e. Bootit is showing the 1TB drive as 8MB and that 8MB is occupied by the Bootit partition. There is no empty space on the drive, and the 'Create' button is greyed out.

I erased the drive, set the bios to UEFI boot and installed Bootit UEFI. This time the drive shows as a 1TB GPT drive, with a 'Windows reserved' partition and an 'EFI' partition. When I tried to change the drive type to EMBR, I got the error message 'Your request is being ignored because EFI systems require a GPT'

I deleted the partitions and changed the drive to EMBR, then reinstalled Bootit UEFI, however the installation changed the drive back to GPT, and it gives the same error message when I try to change it to EMBR.

Can anyone suggest how I can install Bootit and get the drive to be EMBR ?

[TeraByte Support]

You'd would need BootIt Bare Metal in legacy mode. It's showing the drive size reported by the BIOS. In this case, check the view mbr and see what the ending head/sector are and down below to see what the CHS is being reported. On some systems you have to enable LBA Mode or Large Mode for the entire space to see. What brand is it, Dell, etc..?

[CyberSimian]

I set the bios to legacy boot and installed Bootit BM. I can then boot the SSD. Partition work shows there is an 8MB Bootit EMBR partition and that is the entire drive. i.e. Bootit is showing the 1TB drive as 8MB and that 8MB is occupied by the Bootit partition. There is no empty space on the drive, and the 'Create' button is greyed out.

I tried to use BIBM on an NVME M.2 disk in a Lenovo laptop several years ago, but it was unreliable. If I remember correctly, I could define the partitions that I wanted, but the next time that I powered on the system, the partition table was corrupt (or something like that). I finally concluded that BIBM cannot be used with NVME.

I now have a Gigabyte Aorus laptop, which has the luxury of two M.2 sockets, one of which accepts both NVME and SATA disks. So I have a SATA M.2 disk as my BIBM and OS disk, with the other (NVME-only) socket being used for a data disk (also EMBR, but as I don't boot from that, it does not cause a problem).

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[phil_tb]

Thank you for your comments.

I have continued trying to install Bootit BM to the NVME drive. I detail my efforts here for the benefit of anyone else later facing a similar problem.

Since the drive size reported by the BIOS is exactly the size of the Bootit partition, I thought to choose the Bootit partition manually, and create a single 1TB Bootit partition covering the entire drive, then later shrink the partition to 8MB. This failed when Bootit declined to create a 1TB partition.

I then tried to choose the Bootit partition manually and create it at the end of the drive. This failed because the 'Setup' button was greyed out, however I did manage to create a blank 8MB partition at the end of the drive. I then booted from the UFD and installed Bootit and ended up with a 1TB EMBR drive with the Bootit EMBR partition at the beginning of the drive and a blank 8MB partition at the end. I deleted the blank partition, rebooted and had a 1TB EMBR drive with Bootit BM installed, as required.

Since then I have created and deleted a number of partitons, installed and deleted a number of OSs, and rebooted repeatedly. Everything so far appears to be working as advertised.

For the record, my hardware is:
MB MSI B550A-PRO
Bios E7C56AMS.AHD 11.3.2024
CPU AMD 5700G
SSD Crucial P3 1TB M.2 PCIE 3.0

NVME GPT drives are increasingly common, however Bootit UEFI documentation advises against installing multiple OSs on GPT drives (advice I agree with) and Bootit BM has problems with NVME drives. Under these circiumstances, I'm curious about what Bootit's future is.

[TeraByte Support]

It doesn't have anything to do with NVMe drives, it has to do with the BIOS. Normally the way it handles geometry as mentioned but fill option, enabled by default, typically handles it, but others require mode changes in the BIOS.

[Brian K]

NVME GPT drives are increasingly common, however Bootit UEFI documentation advises against installing multiple OSs on GPT drives (advice I agree with)

I can't recall reading that advice about multiple OS on GPT drives. Can you post a page number in the pdf?

I have multiple OS on GPT NVMe drives, using BIU. Three computers and no issues.