BartAIO RAM to CD or USB, selecting the preferred install

I've been testing BARTAIO since it's birth, and it's an excellent program!
The RAM approach is ideal for small BartPE builds, as it's faster and allows extraction of the booting device after booting.
To further improve its features, the author has recently added the capability to install the RAM booting PE to an USB stick, which works great.

However, as he asks for comments/suggestions, here are mine:

EDIT
I would change the "Boot into RAM" step (which now includes the "Install PE to USB" substep) into a "Create ISO" step, and the "Burn to ISO" step into an "Install ISO", including the "Burn ISO to CD" and "Transfer ISO to USB" substeps.
This would help better understand the creation process.

As for installing to USB, BARTAIO now uses Bart's pe2usb approach, to format the stick with MS Format and install Bart's special bootsector with MKBT.
Based on my experience, this works fine in most cases, but there are sticks that don't like it and only boot if formatted with the HP Format tool, which in turn doesn't work for all sticks.
The "Install PE to USB" step could therefore include the following substeps that one could select according to needs:
"Format MKBT"
"Format HP"
"Install"

edborg
P.S. I have made a small script, similar to pe2usb, that formats with HP Format, which I alternatively use when manually installing RAM PE to sticks.
That could be used by BARTAIO as well

Can you post your script? I'll be glad to test it too..

This is my HPFormatUSB.cmd:

edborg

And this is my MSFormatXP.cmd:

edborg

Thank you!

@hooovahh
I've been interested in BARTAIO since its first version.
To better follow its development, may I suggest to upload the Autoplay folder as well.
This would avoid a full BARTAIO download (a 10 MB+ package), when PEbuilder and ScriptPack are not changed.
Thanks
edborg

Well I take one day off work and look at all that's been going one.

@edborg
I agree that using the HP formatting tool would be better. And as I said in the PM I sent you, you will get your Auto Play Media studio 6 file.

Also when I implimented the USB installer, I knew nothing about it (still don't know much) which is why I was glad Bart had already made one, simply integrating it into the AIO was fairly simple

Lastly any suggestions that makes the UI more user friendly is a great idea. If some thing doesn't seem clear, or should be presented in a better way, I'm all for it.

I hope I can be forgiven for not spending much time on my AIO work work work. Sorry. But I'll do what I can, and with the source in your hands it'll help a bunch too. I just hope we don't run into a source control problem, where I improve some thing and you improve some thing and we lose some thing in the integration. Guess I'll worry about that later.

As for USB install methods, I'm not saying HP Format is better than MS Format + MKBT. I had to use both methods because one works on some sticks and the other on some others: there's no universal solution, unfortunately.
By implementing the two methods in BartAIO, the choice would be left to the users.

Thanks for making available the AutoPlay project file
I'm not at all sure I can improve anything, but I'll learn how it works, and that's interesting to me. It'll help putting into practice and testing ideas, nothing more. It's up to you to consider if these ideas, if any, are worthwhile implementing in your package. So, be sure there won't be any problems with source control/integration
edborg

Those are good news, let us know your ideas, maybe someone remembers any cool features that can be added..

Anyone willing to take my STILL VERY primitive approach:
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=15837&st=6

and make it into a more "universal" approach?

I simply miss the time and programming skills to transform my "manual" calculations into a program.

(all the point in my approach, as compared to BOTH the HP format tool and Bart's mkbt ones is that this way the ENTIRE key space can be made available according to the way the BIOS detects the stick, as compared to the "fixed" geometry the 2000/XP driver "sense")

The space you can recover is usually around 8 Mbytes.

jaclaz

Seems quite interesting, I can volunter for the task..

For the next 3 weeks I'll be staying in vacations at home (while my wife keeps working all day.. ) so I'll have plenty of time to dedicate building another approach - I think it would be really interesting to have a more accurate tool for doing this job..


Can you please post in detail all the steps, behavior, interface and features to include in this new application?

As you make me go back with the memory to when I was trying to make bootable a stick that obstinately refused to do so (SEITEC), I wish to add the following.
Notwithstanding your valuable help and assistance, I didn't succeed at that time, and had to return the stick to its legitimate owner before completing any possible attempt, as things seldom work at the first time.
I recently got that stick back and ... magically succeeded in formatting it with HP Format (which I had already used without success before).
Although I can't say it for sure, it is possible that the preparation made with your method "cleaned" the stick so thoroughly, that a subsequent HP Format worked.

So, I believe your method is certainly worthwhile pursuing ... and Nuno has volunteered, already.
edborg

OK,
I'll try to jolt down some info for Nuno as soon as possible.

jaclaz

I have a Hewlett Packard a1000y PC, and the only way I can boot from a USB stick is when I've formatted with the HP USB utility. I don't know why this is but I suspect disk geometry. Also, this computer must only have USB1 in the BIOS because the speed of loading to a ramdisk is terrible.
I haven't tried BartAIO yet, I just noticed your posts here.

I agree, it must be USB1, because my Asus notebook boots quite fast from USB, actually much faster than from CD.

Anyway, even with a slow USB port, a RAM build (the BartAIO approach) runs really fast once booted. Its only limitation is the size of the build, particularly if one wants to use it on a number of different (even low memory) PCs.
This is why Batcher and its ScriptPack comes into play.

After a few experiments, what I've found to be useful for me is a small (60MB) BartPE RAM build, done with BartAIO, which in turn relies on Batcher and its useful collection of basic scripts, and a large (700MB) BartPE HD-like build, with XPE, many utilities, network, Internet, audio, etc.

Both of them are on USB sticks.

I also have a normal ISO made with the large BartPE above and burned to a CD, but I tend to use it much less than the two above.

edborg