BootIt Bare Metal 35% discount at BitsDuJour

i went to the Terabyte site this morning and proceeded to purchase BIBM.

at the Checkout there was en empty box to enter a Coupon Code.

so i did whatever i do when i purchase software and Googled the product name followed by "Coupon Code" (without the " ").

Lo and behold, BitsDuJour is selling it with a 35% discount!

i got my greedy little paws on it before they change their mind.

here:
http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/bootit-bare-metal

 

well,

i installed BIBM to the hard drive to manage my dual booting.

it can be a somewhat complex thing to get into but the support is excellent; video tutorials, FAQ, forum, etc

everything works like it says on the tin.
few things in life are perfect.
Terabyte products are one exception, i own Images for Windows/DOS/Linux and they have never failed in hundreds of imaging and restore.

i'm now happily dual booting between mint XFCE and Windows 8.
before, i would just restore an image.
and even though it takes me about 2 minutes to restore a Windows 8 image, rebooting to switch OSes is much faster.
not to mention less wear on the SSD.

if you are into partitioning and dual booting and such BIBM is a must.

 

moontan.

Nice work. You have caught on quickly. Do you have BIBM set to Limit Primaries? It took me 6 months before I had the courage to remove the tick. Using Unlimited Primaries allows you to have LOTS of OS (if you need more than 4 primary partitions).

 

i chose to limit the primaries because 2 OSes will be enough for me.
plus the partition for BIBM.

i got 70GB of my SSD devoted to Windows 8 and 50 GB to Mint XFCE.

i thought i was going to need your help with BIBM but like i said, the support, tutorials etc are top notch.
you already were kind enough to point me beforehand to the link below (installing Ubuntu based distro with BIBM) so i studied that.

 

You are correct. Limited Primaries are fine for a 3 primary partition setup.

Out of interest, how much Free Space is in your Win8?

 

i'm at work right now but my Win 8 64 bits has about a 25 GB of used disk space and about 45 GB free.
there are just a few programs installed and i keep my data on a secondary internal disk drive.
i'll check just to make sure when i come back from work this morning.

 

No big deal. You don't really want to do this but just to indicate what is possible.

Resize Win8 to 35 GB. Copy (BIBM, IFD or IFL) Win8 into the 35 GB of unallocated space. Set up a Boot item and make sure each Win8 is hidden from the other. You will find the new Win8 is already activated. Now you have a spare test Win8.

Or you could copy the Win8 partition to another HD and boot it with the Swap option in Boot Edit. "Copy" is a great way to clone an OS.

 

This is interesting and worth doing. Boot IFL from the HD. No CD needed once it's on the HD. Only needs a 60 MB partition.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=291

 

and i just happen to have 1 partition available out of my 4 primaries.

tnx for the tip brian!

IFL runs much faster than IFD on my machine, i' m gonna try this on Wednesday when my 'week end' start.

 

I was never able to get the mouse to work using BIBM, even though I had it set to recognize it. So, I ditched the trial. I wasn't going to use the keyboard for all that stuff.

 

Just a comment on using Unlimited Primaries vs Limited Primaries. Say you are using Limited Primaries and you have these partitions....

WinXP, Win7, Linux, BIBM

Then your Win7 Boot Item could look like this....

Win7
WinXP (Hide)
Linux (Hide)
BIBM (Hide)

Say you are using Unlimited Primaries and you have these partitions....

WinXP, Win7, Linux, Data, BIBM

Then your Win7 Boot Item could look like this....

Win7
Data

With Unlimited Primaries you don't have to put partitions into the MBR if you don't intend to use them. Even so, you can still only have a maximum of four partitions in the MBR when using Unlimited Primaries. In this case Disk Management would show two partitions and unallocated space for the remainder of the drive.

 

Just as an FYI, my system is set to Limited primaries, but I am booting a few Logical OS partitions (a couple of Win7s and an XP), in addition to a couple of Win7 Primary partitions. Logical partition booting requires a field associated with the partition to be edited (don't recall offhand, but I think I originally found this out here at Wilders a number of years ago, probably in the old Acronis forum).

No doubt having Unlimited primaries would be easier, but I haven't gotten around to testing this yet and still use other partitioning tools once in a while. One of these days...

Doug

 

Doug,

You are thinking of the Hidden Sectors field. BootIt was updated several years ago to make editing this field no longer a requirement. I used to have OS in logical volumes as you have but my volumes got out of hand. Too many. Unlimited Primaries is easier. I even use the Unlimited Primaries setting when there are only four Primary Partitions on the HD. I'm used to it.

 

Yes, the Hidden Sectors field.

Funny, I could swear that when I once forgot to update the Hidden Sectors field not long ago when I restored a partition to the Extended Partition envelope and tried to boot it using BING, it failed until I did update the Hidden Sectors field. Perhaps it was an older version of BING; I am rather slow in keeping programs up-to-date, and I only updated to BIBM a few months ago. Guess I can test this with BIBM.

Thanks for the info.

Doug

 

wow!
i could barely understand what you guys are saying.
this is no doubt high wizardry stuff!

anyway, all's good with BIMB after a couple of days.

during Mint updates, it updated the GRUB 2 and at boot times i was shown the new GRUB 2 bootloader.
which had me worried because it was something new and i thought it just had overwrote the MBR.

but it's all good, GRUB 2 is installed to the same partition as Mint, where it should be.
so i am shown the BIMB bootloader, select Mint then Mint show me their bootloader.
it's just an extra Enter to push but everything works like it should.

 

Brian,

i just got around today to do this and it was quite easy tnx to the link to that Terabyte tutorial you provided.
booting IFL from the SSD is quite a bit faster than booting from the CD.
and i don't have to keep the CD in the drive all the times.

so now i have on HD0:
1- Linux Mint XFCE
2- Windows 8
3- BIBM
4- IFL

so my 4 slots are all being put to good use now!
tnx again for the tip Brian!
----
when i save an image of XFCE or Windows 8 i also include the BIBM and IFL partitions in the image.
just in case.
---
i also learned quite a few things about partitioning and bootloaders and such in the process.
which is all good!

 

moontan,

Yes, IFL from the HD is fast.

Are you interested in installing another Linux distro to your SSD? I have Ubuntu in a 5 GB partition so you could easily create space. The fun really starts when you are using unlimited primaries.

 

tnx Brian, i think i'll be ok for the moment.

the less OSes i have to manage, the less i have to learn and deal with.
i'm starting to be at an age where time becomes an increasingly valuable commodity.

if i ever need to test something else i can always empty the XCFE partition and use that for testing.
then restore a previous XFCE image to that partition if need be later on.

i'm just gonna keep it simple for the time being.

 

Nothing wrong with that.

 

i just created my first 2 images with IFL from its own partition and everything went well as expected.

just one thing;
i intended to save the BIBM and IFL partitions along with the Windows 8 image but of course IFL was telling me that its own partition was being active.

so of course, i did not chose to save the IFL partition as as was using it.
i don't know much about these things but i just trusted whatever bit of common sense i have left. lol

anyway, i'm just greatly pleased with BIBM.
it does what it says on the tin without any useless bloat.
unlike 99.9% of things in life. lol

 

There is no problem imaging the IFL partition from the IFL partition. It's like imaging the C: drive from the C: drive with PHYLock. It can be done.

The **Active** status is a new thing. I can't recall seeing it prior to ver 2.80. It simply shows the Active partition. If you had booted from an IFL CD the **Active** status would have been next to your most recently used OS.

 

tnx Brian
much appreciated!

 

By the way, these are my BIBM Settings...

General
Use Volume Label
ISO8601 Date/Time
BootNow Support
Keep HD Active
MBRs may be Encrypted
Use HD0 in FAT BPB
Make HD0 Active

Device
PATA Support
SATA-AHCI (1.2)
USB 2.0 Support (depends on your BIOS)
Enable USB 1.1 (UHCI)

Global Geometry and Alignment
Align on 2048 Sectors
Validate Geometry Before Use (in grey)
Align MBR for BIOS Auto Mode
Use New Windows MBR