Thanks for the explanation, Jeremy. Perhaps I was looking for a more technical discussion than the average user, but your mail was exactly what I was looking for.
Aitor On Sun, 19 Mar 2023 at 00:48, Kenneth Davis <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 2:11 PM Aitor Santamaría <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hello, >> >> To those that have used/experience with RUFUS: what is the concept behind >> it? >> I don't get a clear picture of how this software operates, either reading >> the site or the wikipedia: >> >> It makes "bootable USB" and supports "a variety of ISO", so >> (a) does it make truly bootable drives, like "SYS D:", where the drive >> gets a OS file (rewritable) distribution, after transferring the files to >> the drive (mimicking a INSTALL)? >> > > kinda, yes > > (b) copies the ISO into the drive, and somehow mounts the ISO file and >> boots from there, thereby creating a read-only in memory drive? >> > > no, during creation it reads the files from image and copies them to the > writable FAT or NTFS formatted disk. Similar to if you formatted and SYS > drive, then mount CD image, copy files to disk. Unless it is in dd mode, > then it's more of a disk image sector by sector copy to the USB drive - > this allows filesystems on the drive that Windows does not read or write to > but requires the image already be setup to be bootable from a USB disk. > > (c) ... >> >> Thanks in advance, >> Aitor >> >> __________________________________ >> > > Rufus can be used as a dd or rawrite tool for Windows to USB drives. It > can also convert isolinux based CD images to boot from USB while keeping > their options intact. There are some special handling for creating Windows > install media. And to bring it back to FreeDOS, it includes latest FreeDOS > kernel and command.com from FreeDOS distribution enabling creating DOS > bootable USB disks easily. I use it and will copy over latest kernel build > to boot on real hardware. > > Basically you start it, select either FreeDOS or an ISO image, the USB > drive you want to make bootable, it clears/creates the partition table, > formats the drive, writes boot sector, copies all the files over, replaces > isolinux with syslinux and voila bootable disk. Or it works like > rawriye/dd and copies image file directly to disk but then the image must > already include boot sector to work. There are some safety checks so you > don't overwrite non-removable drives and lots of other details I am > glossing over. The author is very approachable and patient with users and > does an excellent job developing it (its open source so easy to follow its > development). > > Jeremy > >> _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
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