I've not commented much recently because although I do watch (and enjoy) your content on consoles, I've never been a console person so can't really add anything to it - if and when your content gets to the ZX Spectrum or Amiga, I'm in the front row! This is a topic I know a lot about and your video summarising it is absolutely perfect (not that I would suggest otherwise for any of your content I have watched so far). The fact is that hard disk formatting and installation can be a nightmare for the inexperienced because you have three layers that you need to get right: 1. Is BIOS, UEFI or both supported on the machine in question? 2. Does the machine understand MBR, GPT or both? Does the drive size mean that you MUST use GPT anyway? 3. What filesystem do you then put on the disk? FAT32, NTFS, Linux EXT4, etc. etc. Whilst technically all of those are separate questions to answer, I think the fact that you've linked BIOS and MBR together, and UEFI and GPT together is a very good move, because pairing them like that means that they should work fine in pretty much all instances - you then only have to decide on a filesystem and usually FAT32 works somehow with most systems. I hope many new users will be grateful for this video because it does make it much easier.
Thanks for your feedback. It's great to get a thumbs up from someone who actually knows what's he's talking about. It's also great timing for me to pick your brains. I'm looking to set up a fast booting Raspberry Pi system for use with emulators such as Fuse and BeebEm. I tried the bare metal emulators which were great but somehow lacking in some areas. Ideally I'd use a standard Raspberry Pi + SD card setup that boots into a cut down Linux with enough to features to run the emulators. I've been playing with Raspian lite and a few tutorials to cut out the delays but I'm not entirely convinced this is the way to go. Just after some thoughts and pointers if you have any. Thanks.
@@BytesNBits It's funny you should ask at this time because I am most of the way through building a light Gentoo Linux build on Raspberry Pi 3B at this very moment. I use Gentoo for all my systems anyway, mainly because I can build it on just about anything and I really like sleek and light OSes. I agree with you about bare metal emulators - as a concept they're excellent and kudos to the people that create them. But where they are lacking is support for network services - for example, being able to attach a network drive or even a USB stick just for ROM transfer to the emulators. I also don't want to just download an entire distro build for emulators like Retropie - I'd rather customise that myself and put on the emulators I want. I see two options here: 1. Have a look at Armbian Linux builds for SBCs. They cover most SBCs and they generally do a light "server" build which is just command line and a "desktop" build that includes a light desktop. You could use the server build as the basis for your own emulator-focused build on which you just install your own light desktop, like XFCE or LXDE. The nice thing about Armbian is they cover a huge number of SBCs so you could focus your content to be more "generic" and not just about Raspberry Pi. 2. You're welcome to a copy of my Gentoo build at any point. The nice thing about Gentoo is that it's a rolling release that you just update, but it's "compile as you go" so updates can take a bit of time. What I do is have one "core" machine that is the update server and compiles binary packages as it goes ready for the other Pi's to install very quickly. There is a "learning curve" to Gentoo but when you get how customisable it actually can be, other distros start to feel a bit inferior. As it happens, I am in the process of setting up both a Raspberry Pi / Linux meet up and a Silver Surfer's Club which will be Open Source focused because I have access to a hall facility in a social club that I am chair of that needs to bring in a bit more income. I am more than happy to assist you at any point with any of this, especially because working with someone who is reasonably new to Linux helps me create the material I want to create for my meet up - and I am not really planning my own channel at this stage because I much prefer face-to-face tuition, so it's not as though there's any competition! If you're interested, we can maybe swap email addresses or meet up online and chat. I don't use much social media but I am on Discord and Telegram. Let me know what you think.
@@BytesNBits PS. I've not tested my Gentoo build on a MicroSD boot up yet because I put the root filesystem on a USB SSD drive on the Pi 3 (due to the amount of read-writes going on because of compilation tasks). But I will give it a go and let you know - it is still quite a bit lighter than Raspberry Pi OS so should be quite a bit quicker on SD cards.
@@BytesNBits Batocera is pretty much the standard nowadays for Retro emulation on any ARM-based system. It is available as a single download image that can be written to a sdcard and run on a Pi. If you have a Pi4 or Pi5 go with that as anything older will struggle with the newer emulated systems. If you are planning to do a video about it stay far away from native Linux distros and a gazillion customisations as you will lose your audience very quickly ;-)
@@BytesNBits Take a look at the Yocto project. It has a bit of a learning curve, but there are plenty of examples and tutorials out there. With Yocto, you can build a completely customized Linux build for a Pi (or any SBC really) that includes exactly what you want/need and nothing else.
Certain USB hard drives such as WD Elements utilize a hardware 'bridge' or some other trickery (I don't know the specifics) that will allow an older OS such as Win XP to access more than 2.2TB. The WD Quick Formatter tool is required with "XP Compatible" option set. Just out of curiosity I tried this with a 3TB FAT32 USB on an Xbox 360 and it worked.
sounds impossible, I do not see how it can be mapped. If you know more details about this bridge or you know where to find more data about it please share. Thank you.
@@chain-of-thought Sorry, I don't know the technical details. Try searching the WD support pages. Years ago I would buy WD Elements USB HDDs larger than 2.2TB and they would just work with Win XP. Then I bought one that didn't work and that's when I discovered WD Quick Formatter can fix the issue. They don't seem to advertise this useful function, so I don't know if their newer drives still support it.
There's one compatibility issue that concerns me: if I have a UEFI computer and I am using an MBR storage device, is there a reliable way of converting that storage device to a GPT one without losing data?
sir i'm using 320X480 resoltuion lcd screen compatible with raspberry pi, the problem i'm facing is that the window tab of some software is opening in a very big size and i can't even drag them to see what's in the bottom, like the tab gets bigger in size then the screen, what should i do, i've tried dozens of tutorials, still can't do anything of this problem
I've not come across this myself so this might not work. If you can get to the maximise button maximise the window and it should then resize to the screen. If not try plugging in a full size monitor, then open the app and resize the window to a small size. Then see if it opens at that size next time on the LCD screen. Good Luck!
I've not commented much recently because although I do watch (and enjoy) your content on consoles, I've never been a console person so can't really add anything to it - if and when your content gets to the ZX Spectrum or Amiga, I'm in the front row!
This is a topic I know a lot about and your video summarising it is absolutely perfect (not that I would suggest otherwise for any of your content I have watched so far).
The fact is that hard disk formatting and installation can be a nightmare for the inexperienced because you have three layers that you need to get right:
1. Is BIOS, UEFI or both supported on the machine in question?
2. Does the machine understand MBR, GPT or both? Does the drive size mean that you MUST use GPT anyway?
3. What filesystem do you then put on the disk? FAT32, NTFS, Linux EXT4, etc. etc.
Whilst technically all of those are separate questions to answer, I think the fact that you've linked BIOS and MBR together, and UEFI and GPT together is a very good move, because pairing them like that means that they should work fine in pretty much all instances - you then only have to decide on a filesystem and usually FAT32 works somehow with most systems.
I hope many new users will be grateful for this video because it does make it much easier.
Thanks for your feedback. It's great to get a thumbs up from someone who actually knows what's he's talking about.
It's also great timing for me to pick your brains. I'm looking to set up a fast booting Raspberry Pi system for use with emulators such as Fuse and BeebEm. I tried the bare metal emulators which were great but somehow lacking in some areas. Ideally I'd use a standard Raspberry Pi + SD card setup that boots into a cut down Linux with enough to features to run the emulators. I've been playing with Raspian lite and a few tutorials to cut out the delays but I'm not entirely convinced this is the way to go. Just after some thoughts and pointers if you have any. Thanks.
@@BytesNBits It's funny you should ask at this time because I am most of the way through building a light Gentoo Linux build on Raspberry Pi 3B at this very moment.
I use Gentoo for all my systems anyway, mainly because I can build it on just about anything and I really like sleek and light OSes.
I agree with you about bare metal emulators - as a concept they're excellent and kudos to the people that create them. But where they are lacking is support for network services - for example, being able to attach a network drive or even a USB stick just for ROM transfer to the emulators.
I also don't want to just download an entire distro build for emulators like Retropie - I'd rather customise that myself and put on the emulators I want.
I see two options here:
1. Have a look at Armbian Linux builds for SBCs. They cover most SBCs and they generally do a light "server" build which is just command line and a "desktop" build that includes a light desktop. You could use the server build as the basis for your own emulator-focused build on which you just install your own light desktop, like XFCE or LXDE. The nice thing about Armbian is they cover a huge number of SBCs so you could focus your content to be more "generic" and not just about Raspberry Pi.
2. You're welcome to a copy of my Gentoo build at any point. The nice thing about Gentoo is that it's a rolling release that you just update, but it's "compile as you go" so updates can take a bit of time. What I do is have one "core" machine that is the update server and compiles binary packages as it goes ready for the other Pi's to install very quickly. There is a "learning curve" to Gentoo but when you get how customisable it actually can be, other distros start to feel a bit inferior.
As it happens, I am in the process of setting up both a Raspberry Pi / Linux meet up and a Silver Surfer's Club which will be Open Source focused because I have access to a hall facility in a social club that I am chair of that needs to bring in a bit more income.
I am more than happy to assist you at any point with any of this, especially because working with someone who is reasonably new to Linux helps me create the material I want to create for my meet up - and I am not really planning my own channel at this stage because I much prefer face-to-face tuition, so it's not as though there's any competition!
If you're interested, we can maybe swap email addresses or meet up online and chat. I don't use much social media but I am on Discord and Telegram.
Let me know what you think.
@@BytesNBits PS. I've not tested my Gentoo build on a MicroSD boot up yet because I put the root filesystem on a USB SSD drive on the Pi 3 (due to the amount of read-writes going on because of compilation tasks). But I will give it a go and let you know - it is still quite a bit lighter than Raspberry Pi OS so should be quite a bit quicker on SD cards.
@@BytesNBits Batocera is pretty much the standard nowadays for Retro emulation on any ARM-based system. It is available as a single download image that can be written to a sdcard and run on a Pi. If you have a Pi4 or Pi5 go with that as anything older will struggle with the newer emulated systems. If you are planning to do a video about it stay far away from native Linux distros and a gazillion customisations as you will lose your audience very quickly ;-)
@@BytesNBits Take a look at the Yocto project. It has a bit of a learning curve, but there are plenty of examples and tutorials out there. With Yocto, you can build a completely customized Linux build for a Pi (or any SBC really) that includes exactly what you want/need and nothing else.
Certain USB hard drives such as WD Elements utilize a hardware 'bridge' or some other trickery (I don't know the specifics) that will allow an older OS such as Win XP to access more than 2.2TB. The WD Quick Formatter tool is required with "XP Compatible" option set. Just out of curiosity I tried this with a 3TB FAT32 USB on an Xbox 360 and it worked.
I'd not come across that. Thanks for the info.
sounds impossible, I do not see how it can be mapped. If you know more details about this bridge or you know where to find more data about it please share. Thank you.
@@chain-of-thought Sorry, I don't know the technical details. Try searching the WD support pages. Years ago I would buy WD Elements USB HDDs larger than 2.2TB and they would just work with Win XP. Then I bought one that didn't work and that's when I discovered WD Quick Formatter can fix the issue. They don't seem to advertise this useful function, so I don't know if their newer drives still support it.
great video! keep it going!
Thank you! Will do!
There's one compatibility issue that concerns me: if I have a UEFI computer and I am using an MBR storage device, is there a reliable way of converting that storage device to a GPT one without losing data?
There are some apps that will do that for you. Have a look at Minitools partition manager. You might need to paid for version though.
sir i'm using 320X480 resoltuion lcd screen compatible with raspberry pi, the problem i'm facing is that the window tab of some software is opening in a very big size and i can't even drag them to see what's in the bottom, like the tab gets bigger in size then the screen, what should i do, i've tried dozens of tutorials, still can't do anything of this problem
I've not come across this myself so this might not work. If you can get to the maximise button maximise the window and it should then resize to the screen. If not try plugging in a full size monitor, then open the app and resize the window to a small size. Then see if it opens at that size next time on the LCD screen. Good Luck!
Thank you.
You're welcome!
after formatting my usb drive to MBR for ps3 use, i noticed that file transfer on pc became slower.
Is there a way to reverse this?
You'll need a formatting tool like Minitool Partition Wizard to turn it back to a GPT drive. This will erase all the content though.
Wrong. If the boot sector of an MBR get corrupted, you do not need to “rebuild the drive”, you can simply recreate it!
Thanks for the tip.