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Confused by RMPrepUSB for E2B instructions - need help

rmprepusb easy2boot

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#1 Theregu

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Posted 17 September 2015 - 05:05 AM

 
 

RMPrepUSB isn't working the way I expected, but I'm a newbie and its' very likely I'm confused about how it's supposed to work.

 

Let me begin by explaining what I want to do...

 

The USB drive I'm trying to setup is a Seagate Backup Plus Slim, 1TB USB3 disk, which shows up in Win7 as a fixed local disk (not as a removable drive; if there were some way to make Windows think it's a removable drive, I'd be much happier -- but there doesn't appear to be a way to do that).  I need to press Ctrl-Z to have RMPrepUSB see it (as expected).

 

In the end, I want one 64GB bootable NTFS partition for E2B, and I want the rest of the drive to be a separate NTFS partition.

 

My confusion regards the instructions provided on this page: http://www.easy2boot...sing-rmprepusb/

 

On that page, an early section reads: "The next steps make a single-partition drive, you can add more partitions later.

If you tick the Boot as HDD option a small hidden Type 21h partition will also be made by RMPrepUSB."

 

Q1: Do I really want to do that -- set it up to "Boot as HDD"?  I ask because I'm confused by something later on that page, concering multiple partitions, where it says: "For a multiple-partition USB drive, use RMPrepUSB to make the first partition and untick the Boot as HDD (C: 2PTNS) option". 

 

That seems to conform with this part: "4 Filesystem and Overrides - ... If you are going to create a multiple-partition USB drive, do NOT tick the Boot as HDD option and set the Partition Size to a smaller size."

 

The thing is, the resulting drive won't boot without specifying at least one of the other options, right? Either I need to select "Boot as FDD" -or- "Boot as ZIP", correct? So, Q2: which should I choose?

 

 

Moving on to a different issue, whenever I run RMPrepUSB on the drive in question, it behaves strangely and inconsistently.  For one thing, even though I enter 64 GB as the size I want, when I click some checkbox (like to select NTFS instead of FAT), RMPrepUSB usually ends up chaging that field to MAX (or IMAX?) or whatever!  Q3: What's up with that?

 

Also, even though RMPrepUSB always starts with the "Copy OS files from here...." with the path to the Easy2Boot_v1.72rev1.7z file specified, I'm confused by the instructions for step 5: "5 Copy OS Files - click 'Choose Source' Browse to file and answer Copy Files='NO' and set to the path of the Easy2Boot .zip file you downloaded in step 2". But doesn't "Copy Files="NO" mean that the files are NOT to be copied?  Q4: If so, what's the point?

 

But it E2B files are supposed to be copied, Q5: don't I want to copy the files that I've customized for E2B rather than just re-copy the original downloaded .7z file?

 

Please help this confused newb!

 

 

 

 

 


#2 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 17 September 2015 - 10:38 AM

The "missing bit" is that with all checkboxes UNticked the RMPREPUSB will "normally" set the thing to "boot as HDD".

 

The following should cover Q1/Q2/Q3.

 

Basically the default is to behave like *any* partitioning tool would, i.e. "boot as HDD" and the checkboxes are "overriding" some of this base setting.

The "Boot as FDD" will create not a MBR (and as such you will have no partitions, just a "superfloppy")

The "Boot as ZIP" will create a MBR BUT will create only one partition in the 4th entry in partition table

The "Boot as HDD C: 2 Ptns" means that only one "visible" partition will be created but a second one, usuallly only one cylinder i.e. roughly 8Mb, will be created, not formatted and assigned a partition ID of 21 (hidden FAT 12). This setting is only meaningful on a device that is "removable" because experiments led to finding that some (poorly coded) BIOSes can boot from a removable device with a MBR and partition table containing two entries but refuse to do so if only one parittion entry is present.

The "Force use of LBA code" is another (rarely used) setting to "cover" another kind of defective BIOSes that have issues with CHS addressing.

The "use 64hds/32secs" is yet another attempt to workaround "tricky" BIOSes, particularly when also the "Boot as ZIP" is selected because actual ZIP disks did have a 64x32 geometry and some BIOSes do require that for "believing" that the device is a ZIP partitioned disk.

 

Wait for Steve6375 for better answers to your Q3/4/5.

 

:duff:

Wonko



#3 steve6375

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Posted 19 September 2015 - 08:49 AM

Q3 - don't know what you mean - sorry

Q4 - You don't want to copy the .7z file to the USB drive, so you click No.  You want to extract it!

Q5 - What files have you customised? Where in the instructions does it mention customising files?

 

P.S. RMPrepUSB has a 'live help' feature - if you just hover the mouse over each option, it is all explained in the Help box!


Edited by steve6375, 19 September 2015 - 09:01 AM.





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