BIBM & Grub4Dos compatibility

I am not sure to have understood your point/question/doubt (actually I am pretty sure I have not understood it).

Please, read attentively my previous response, besides this.

My example about changing a partition for becoming "active" implies that I have a multiple OS I would like to multi-boot, and as you said, this is a good reason for having BIBM installed.
The only problem is that I would like this could happen by booting my system, starting from and using an external HD, not from its own internal HDs.

 

Please see Post #23. I don't recommend installing BIBM to a non HD0.

 

Thanks Brian K.
Anyway, a "not recommended" thing often does not imply that it cannot "technically" be made, does it ?

I'd wait to hear for a position from Panagiotis, too, since I seem to remember he had a slightly different idea about the possibility to install BIBM on the external drive.

 

I think that I had done it in the past when I first purchased BING.
But, since I was a noob with it at the time I'm not sure if it was installed in the hd0 too, or not.

Panagiotis

 

It should work.
The USB-HD's MBR will certainly be converted to EMBR; otherwise BIBM will refuse to proceed with the installation.

Panagiotis

 

@ Brian K and @ Panagiotis,

since your responses went in different paths, I tought the best way to proceed was to operatively make some practical trials.

Hereunder the results of the trials, just for your information and for giving a feedback, which were made always starting with a "safe" system, that is only with the "target" HD connected, without any "production HDs".

First experiment was conducted as I proposed some few posts before, that is booting from the boot CD media and connecting ONLY the external target HD as USB device.
--> No way for the USB hard disk to be recognized from the installation procedure, that was stopped.

Second experiment, by directly connecting the target HD as it was the unique HD in the system (that is,without a USB connection).
The installation went smoothly and finely - as expected - since this way the target HD has to be considered as being in a normal condition (that is, a normal HD0, as Brian K says). Booting the system, BIBM resulted normally installed in the EMBR, and all worked nicely.

But the surprise came after, in the third experimet, when I connected the same HD (with BIBM already and previously installed) back again through the USB port.
The HD resulted bootable but, since no EMBR was found, the boot procedure stopped !!

The only certainty, at this point, is that the EMBR cannot be installed, or even recognized, if a USB HD is used for the installation or for the boot phase.

Comments ?

 

Check your bios settings.
Is your UDB-HD your 1st boot device in the boot sequence? Not all bioses support this; those that do support it will identify and display the usb-hd as a boot device in the bios settings. (I'm not talking about the hotkey f11, f12 etc. to select the boot device right after the system is initialized).

BIBM will always search for the EMBR on the booting drive of the bios, if it does not find the EMBR there it will not boot.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2303413&postcount=20

Panagiotis

 

The system/BIOS I have used for BIBM trials always list all the connected USB HDs within the "HD sub-group" and the boot sequence was HD/cdrom/floppy.

On the other hand, please read attentively my post, where I said "The HD resulted bootable but...", meaning that in the 3rd trial (when only the external HD was connected, through USB) the system effectively booted (from the external HD) but after that the boot procedure stopped, as it did not find the EMBR.
I could see this while booting, since I was notified by a warning like "...no EMBR was found, please reboot the system...." (I do not remember the exact statement, though).

In my opinion, such a statement means that the system booted effectively starting from the MBR (modified by the BIBM installation), but then it was not possible to access to the bootsector of the EMBR partition.

Anyway, your advice on the boot sequence was legitimate/right and so I'll check it in detail.