RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

NTDEV
1

Even if you could, which it is easy to do, it’s not a good idea. NT writes
to the system disk so much that you would rather quickly wear out the CF
card. If you’re absolutely intent on doing this, you could simply get an
adapter (hardware) that connects directly to an IDE connector. They are
relatively cheap ($40-$50) and are MUCH faster and more compatible than the
USB route.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of David Weld
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 5:01 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Making a CompactFlash card bootable for NT?

Hi. I’ve got a PC/104 SBC running NT 4. It’s got a bootable IDE
CompactFlash device, and NT is installed on this drive. What I want to do
is take a blank CompactFlash card, install NT on it, and make it bootable.
This is easy enough to do across Ethernet through a standard download
procedure, but instead what I want to do is install NT on the card directly
from my W2K development system via an off-the-shelf USB card reader. The
card appears as a drive under Windows Explorer and I have all the necessary
NT files that I can copy onto this drive. The question is: What can I use
to actually make the card bootable? Is there a utility that does this?

Thanks.

Dave

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2

So does NT-Embedded do some modifications that prevent the wear on the
system disk?

  • Dennis

Dennis Merrill
Embedded Systems Engineer
Thermo Electron Corporation
Spectroscopy Division

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory G. Dyess [mailto:xxxxx@pdq.net]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 4:15 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

Even if you could, which it is easy to do, it’s not a good idea. NT writes
to the system disk so much that you would rather quickly wear out the CF
card. If you’re absolutely intent on doing this, you could simply get an
adapter (hardware) that connects directly to an IDE connector. They are
relatively cheap ($40-$50) and are MUCH faster and more compatible than the
USB route.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of David Weld
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 5:01 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Making a CompactFlash card bootable for NT?

Hi. I’ve got a PC/104 SBC running NT 4. It’s got a bootable IDE
CompactFlash device, and NT is installed on this drive. What I want to do
is take a blank CompactFlash card, install NT on it, and make it bootable.
This is easy enough to do across Ethernet through a standard download
procedure, but instead what I want to do is install NT on the card directly
from my W2K development system via an off-the-shelf USB card reader. The
card appears as a drive under Windows Explorer and I have all the necessary
NT files that I can copy onto this drive. The question is: What can I use
to actually make the card bootable? Is there a utility that does this?

Thanks.

Dave

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3

Yes, very much so. I don’t know all the details, but NT Embedded can boot
from a READ-ONLY device whereas NT cannot. Compact Flash devices have a
limited number of write cycles per sector before they no longer function on
that sector.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of
xxxxx@thermonicolet.com
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 4:27 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

So does NT-Embedded do some modifications that prevent the wear on the
system disk?

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4

With flash drives Embedded NT has a zero pagefile.sys of zero and a RAM
cache for any writes to the drive. The cache allows normal NT changes to
the registry etc to take place but not be saved across reboots. Under
normal NT setting the pagefile down to a size of zero will give you a
dialog every reboot about it being a bad idea to have a zero size
pagefile. I haven’t been able to figure out what embedded NT has changed
to by supress the message. It seems like there was a registry entry
involved, but setting the same registry entry in standard NT didn’t
supress the message. Likewise I don’t remember detecting any differences
in the DLL’s that I though would be involved.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory G. Dyess [mailto:xxxxx@pdq.net]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 5:36 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

Yes, very much so. I don’t know all the details, but NT Embedded can
boot
from a READ-ONLY device whereas NT cannot. Compact Flash devices have a
limited number of write cycles per sector before they no longer function
on
that sector.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of
xxxxx@thermonicolet.com
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 4:27 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

So does NT-Embedded do some modifications that prevent the wear on the
system disk?

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5

Remember, the pagefile need not be on the boot drive. So, if there is
another drive in the system and you are only booting from the CF, you
can:

  • Move the pagefile or
  • Only put the boot loader on the flash and have it boot to the
    harddisk.

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Richard Mahn
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 3:05 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

With flash drives Embedded NT has a zero pagefile.sys of zero and a RAM
cache for any writes to the drive. The cache allows normal NT changes to
the registry etc to take place but not be saved across reboots. Under
normal NT setting the pagefile down to a size of zero will give you a
dialog every reboot about it being a bad idea to have a zero size
pagefile. I haven’t been able to figure out what embedded NT has changed
to by supress the message. It seems like there was a registry entry
involved, but setting the same registry entry in standard NT didn’t
supress the message. Likewise I don’t remember detecting any differences
in the DLL’s that I though would be involved.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory G. Dyess [mailto:xxxxx@pdq.net]
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 5:36 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

Yes, very much so. I don’t know all the details, but NT Embedded can
boot from a READ-ONLY device whereas NT cannot. Compact Flash devices
have a limited number of write cycles per sector before they no longer
function on that sector.

Greg

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com]On Behalf Of
xxxxx@thermonicolet.com
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 4:27 PM
To: NT Developers Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] RE: Making a Compact Flash card bootable for NT?

So does NT-Embedded do some modifications that prevent the wear on the
system disk?

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6

With flash drives Embedded NT has a zero pagefile.sys of zero and a RAM
cache for any writes to the drive. The cache allows normal NT changes to
the registry etc to take place but not be saved across reboots. Under
normal NT setting the pagefile down to a size of zero will give you a
dialog every reboot about it being a bad idea to have a zero size
pagefile. I haven’t been able to figure out what embedded NT has changed
to by supress the message. It seems like there was a registry entry
involved, but setting the same registry entry in standard NT didn’t
supress the message. Likewise I don’t remember detecting any differences
in the DLL’s that I though would be involved.

So does NT-Embedded do some modifications that prevent the wear on the
system disk?

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