When I create a bootable installer with RURUS for Hiren's Boot CD or Gandalf or any other help tool that should boot any UEFI or BIOS PC, old or new. What's the most universal scheme to choose that will work on any PC? I'm creating it on a 256GB thumbdrive.
Last edited by rodion15; 2 Weeks Ago at 04:37.
Easy 2 boot.
Its whole purpose is to make a usb drive compatible in a whole range of situations.
Format it as Fat32. Not all computers will boot from an NTFS disk but they will all boot from Fat32.
Windows won't format drives bigger than 32GB.
MiniToolPartitionWizard will.
Windows is quite happy to work with it, it is just the formatting job that it cannot do.
Since Fat32 cannot take files greater than 4GB, some people partition Windows installation drives into a fat32 area to handle the booting and an NTFS area to store the install.esd / install.wim file if it is bigger than 4GB.
Create bootable USB installer if install.wim is greater than 4GB - TenForumsTutorials
I choose the alternative approach of splitting the install.esd / install.wim into smaller chunks.
DISM - Split install.wim file - TenForumsTutorials
All the best,
Denis
Last edited by Try3; 2 Weeks Ago at 08:40.
What I do is download the appropiate ISOs (though I'm not sure about MediCat, the others you mentioned should work fine along with any OSes like Windows and Linux).
Then I build my multi-boot USB using the Ventoy program (I usually set for exFAT and MBR, but your system may boot better with other options).
After that, I copy the ISOs to the correct partition of the USB. Ventoy actually builds the USB into two partitions - a smaller bootable partition and the remainder where you copy the ISOs to.
Then, I do a test run and make sure all the ISOs can boot.
There's a whole thread on how to do that.
Win10XPE - Build Your Own Rescue Media [2]
But no, Ventoy creates a usb with a small boot partition, and the rest of the usb is a partition you can save as many different bootable ISO's as it can hold. At boot Ventoy let's you choose which one to mount and boot.
Screenshots: ScreenShot . Ventoy
Easy to boot or ventoy, e2b is better because it has ventoy but like way more than just ventoy.
Basically it covers everything so you have a usb that is filling all situations and is multi purpose. It formats the partitions accordingly. Basically what the other ppl are saying about partitions but it means that you also have a usb setup for any situation and you never need to flash it again which is a moot point, it means you save the wear on your drive and have something you can add media too were its basically got all roads covered.\
- Ventoy is good on a basic level it breaks when you need extended functionality from boot media
- Medicat is between Ventoy and E2b
- E2b is the best one it can do everything and can load ventoy and medicat and everything else like DOS, windows, diskettes, iso, anything that is bootable etc
E2b also has a uefi manager called sfgm or something i forgot the name exactly but it means you can load the media on Legacy bios or Uefi.
Its just better by a big margin a step above ventoy, is only good for running media in basic situations like say running a linux iso but it breaks past that and there is many bootable media that fail on ventoy. ventoy is a good basic boot manager but its limited.
Easy 2 boot is the better one, it covers everything you will ever need from a boot manager. Long winded but you can see its doing a lot and that is the short version. it just means you have compatibility for every scenario because other managers will fail with some media. I never use to use e2b but one day i had media that failed on ventoy but since i made the switch e2b is much better imo its got a lot of feature to it.
- Easy2Boot – original E2B Legacy\MBR booting based on grub4dos.
- agFM (a1ive grub2 File Manager) (optional) – for Legacy\MBR and UEFI32\UEFI64 booting based on open source a1ive’s version of grub2 and grubfm.
- Ventoy (Ventoy for Easy2Boot) (optional) – for Legacy\MBR and UEFI32\64 booting based on open source grub2-based Ventoy project.
- Secure UEFI64 booting is supported (unless blocked by UEFI DBx blacklist in BIOS) – Once booted to the agFM menu, secure boot is temporarily disabled so all ISOs can then be booted. Secure Booting using E2B Partition Images made from your ISOs has no restrictions – no need to disable Secure Boot or use MOK Manager or modify your BIOS settings.
- MemTest86 and FreeDOS are already included. Just add your DOS files – boot to FreeDOS and run them.
Boot .ISO, .WIM, .EFI, .IMA, .IMG, .VHD, .VHDx, .HFS + others (files can be over 4GB because NTFS is used).
Generic method of booting Linux ISOs (no need to update E2B every few months because a new Linux distro no longer works!).
-E2B and agFM use the ‘Easy2Boot/partnew’ technique which is successful in booting over 99% of all Linux ISOs. Unlike other solutions such as YUMI, Ventoy, Multiboot, etc. which may break when a new distro is released. Ventoy cannot boot all ISOs (e.g. Holo/Steam Linux ISOs, Many DOS ISOs, systems with low RAM, etc.)
- Legacy boot to MS-DOS, FreeDOS, Win98, XP with SATA\RAID Mass Storage drivers automatically added, Linux, Windows Vista-10, ISOs, Windows VHDs, WIM files, etc..
- Add multiple HFS (Mac OSX) partition images using .imgptnREP3 file extension for UEFI-booting.
Add partition Image files (.imgPTN files) – switch in any partition image and then boot to it. You can even make a partition image from other bootable USB drives. Add images which can Secure Boot.
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