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agFM on a separate drive?

I have a "legacy" E2B USB with NTFS+FAT Data+FAT BIOS partitions, which means it can't UEFI boot and I can't easily add that either (I think?)

So I thought about adding agFM to a separate stick, so I can use them in combination, but agFM always seems to crash at boot looking for a nonexistent file :/

You can extract and add the agFM files to the FAT32 Data partition which should be Partition 2. Then you can UEFI-boot from Partition 2.

As for a seperate stick, the agFM files assume they are on Partition 2 (FAT32) and that the payload files are on Partition 1 (NTFS) which has the E2B menu folders on it.

Since I don't know how you made the 2nd separate stick and dont know what the 'crash' looks like or what messages you see, I cant help much with that.

Or - Why not just remake the whole E2B drive and use the Gear Wheel button so you can specify the first three partitions. Then Partition 1 will be NTFS, Partition 2 can be FAT32 (with agFM and your data) and Partition 3 can be anything you like?

 

I just drafted an elaborate response which this forum silently discarded. Wow.

The second stick is unrelated to E2B, I just created an EFI partition on it with agFM. I wanted to avoid recreating my stick as I am on the go. I thought maybe agFM would be able to load payloads from other partitions without requiring partition 1 in place.

If partition 3 is anything I like, wouldn't I sacrifice legacy BIOS botting? That wouldn't work as I also use my E2B stick to salvage old laptops with Zorin OS Lite 😉

Not quite sure what you mean? I said 'You can extract and add the agFM files to the FAT32 Data partition which should be Partition 2. Then you can UEFI-boot from Partition 2.'

UEFI-booting merely requires a FAT partition and the correct EFI boot file (e.g. \EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI for a x86 UEFI64 system). UEFI-booting does not require any special 'EFI partition' (whatever that is - ESP?) or a GPT partitioned drive.

You already have a FAT Partition 2 on the E2B USB drive, so just extract the agFM download files directly to the root of that volume. Then you can legacy boot from the USB drive or UEFI-boot from Partition 2 of the USB drive (by using the BIOS Boot Selection menu hotkey - e.g. F8 or F12, etc. depending on BIOS type).

 

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