On Sat, Mar 18, 2023, 2:11 PM Aitor Santamaría <aitor...@gmail.com> 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 >
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