Utilities to make FAT16, FAT32 and exFAT CF cards bootable

jmaurolagoitia

Hi all,

I've read everypost in this thread and tried to make my 8Gb bootable by formating it with the CardTricks 145 version. I has not worked. I'm using a Eyefi 8Gb Explore2 card and an IXUS100 camera.

I've confirmed that the labels in the bootsector are correctly saved so I guess the problem will be on the camera side. Should this work fr point and shoot or only for DSLR?

Thank you for your help.

BR

Jon

fe50

Hello & welcome, Jon !

jmaurolagoitia
make my 8Gb bootable by formating it with the CardTricks 145 version.

The CHDK autostart method does only work with FAT12 or FAT16 partitions, the max. possible partition size for FAT16 is 4GB.

Although you can make a FAT32 partition CHDK-bootable (i.e. write the tag to the cards MBR), this DOES NOT work.

Cards > 4GB normaly can be used when they are split in to partitions, a (small) FAT12/FAT16 partition to start and a (big) FAT32 one for the data.

But - when i remember correctly, the Eye-Fi cards can not be partitioned / prepared this way due to the special card firmware...

Using the search function you could find some related threads...

jmaurolagoitia

Thanks for the answer fe50,

I've already looked in every thread I could and in this one, some of the members have published that it worked for them to autoboot with FAT32.

I guess it will not work for me then.

Thank you again.

J

fe50

Here's the thread i meant:

* https://chdk.setepontos.com/d/5068

...also read this post:

[unknown]
I have been doing a bunch of testing with the new 8GB Eye-Fi card.

You have two options really, because you can not format the card into two partitions and get Eye-Fi to work from the second partition.

First option is to format FAT 32 then copy CHDK onto the card and just using the firmware update method boot CHDK manually.

The second option, which is the one I settled on, is to partition the card to two 4GB partitions, format the first partition as FAT 16 and then load CHDK onto that partition (as well as the Eye-Fi stuff). The second partition is more or less a waste since the camera or CHDK can not access that partition. (If you switch to the second partition using CHDK it will give you an Card Error message)

The benefit to me over the standard 4GB Eye-Fi card was the ability to do Ad-Hoc transfers and handling of RAW data transfers.

You could also buy their older 4GB Pro card and do the same thing, but the older card has to be filed to give the card the ability to fool the camera it has a write protect lock switch.

Furthermore I found that everyone sells the old card for about the same price as the new 8GB card. So whats the difference. The new 8GB card already has the write protect switch. So you can forget the filing of the card.

I guess no matter how you look at it, there is no way to actually use the full 8GB of the card. I faced that reality and moved on just happy I can handle the RAW and Ad-Hoc transfers.

Pelican

I've just developed a new tool to make CF and SD cards bootable with a win GUI (handles FAT, FAT32 and exFAT filesystems).
(bootCF needs a dll, handles FAT32 only and command line tool)

http://pel.hu/down/EOScard.exe

pixeldoc2000

Pelican
I've just developed a new tool to make CF and SD cards bootable with a win GUI (handles FAT and FAT32).
(bootCF needs a dll, FAT32 and command line only)

Very helpfull tool!

Created wiki page about it: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/EOScard

Tested on Windows 7.

Thanks!

n00bE

whim
Hi,

I've just updated CardTricks to also allow making FAT32 partitions bootable,
when option "CF boot sector" is checked, the following strings are written to MBR:

FAT16: at 0x2B "EOS_DEVELOP" at 0x40 "BOOTDISK"
FAT32: at 0x47 "EOS_DEVELOP" at 0x5C "BOOTDISK"

(the quotes are not written, of course)

[edit] Note: Useless for CHDK / P&S in general, only DSLRs can boot off FAT32 partitions

I have successfully tested on 8 GB SD cards and 8 GB memory sticks, but (as non-DSLR owner)
don't have CF cards to test on. Note that, because the program was originally developed just for
CHDK on SD cards, it will not allow you to format cards <= 4GB as FAT32.
For Canon P&S owners there is no new functionality
So...if any of you DSLR guys want to test this on real CF, it's here:

DL location:
CardTricks145 (535 kB, CT+cmdline+sources)

Please note: the cmdline utils DO NOT CHECK the file system - after running
bootableCF32.exe on a FAT16 card, or
bootable(CF).exe on a FAT32 card you will need to FORMAT and LOSE ALL DATA !

cheers,

wim

[edit 30-12-09: re-uploaded, download limit (1000) was reached. Happy New Year you all ! ]
[edit 28-02-10: re-uploaded, download limit (1000) was reached again ]
[edit 28-03-10: re-uploaded, download limit (1000) was reached again ? ]
[edit 09-06-10: added alternative DL location ]
[edit 26-06-10: re-uploaded, download limit (1000) was reached again ]
[edit 21-11-10: removed drop.io links ]

Sorry to be such a newbie, but I'm installing Magic Lantern (fw 1.9.0) on my DSLR (Rebel T2i) & am having trouble making my SDHC card bootable! It's a Transcend class 10 32GB (FAT32) & I'm using Mac OS X. Is there any way you could go step-by-simple-step (or provide video-link!) to a simple rookie like me?

zeno

I've just uploaded MacBoot - an OSX app that makes SD and CF cards bootable (for CHDK, Magic Lantern and Canon Basic). See http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/macboot/macboot.html

It's pretty much an OSX equivalent of Pelican's EOSCard.

n00bE

zeno
I've just uploaded MacBoot - an OSX app that makes SD and CF cards bootable (for CHDK, Magic Lantern and Canon Basic). See http://www.zenoshrdlu.com/macboot/macboot.html

It's pretty much an OSX equivalent of Pelican's EOSCard.

Thanks, just what I needed!
Only 1 problem, MacBoot says "there are no suitable cards",
is this because I have a 32GB card?

zeno

Yes, you need to tell it to accept cards larger than 16Gb. Edit the macboot.properties file (double-click it) and change the line "maxsize=16000" to "maxsize=32000".

The limit is intended to prevent you accidentally formatting a hard disk.

n00bE

zeno
Yes, you need to tell it to accept cards larger than 16Gb. Edit the macboot.properties file (double-click it) and change the line "maxsize=16000" to "maxsize=32000".

The limit is intended to prevent you accidentally formatting a hard disk.

NVM I had to change the maxsize (actually had to write it in at 33000) Thanks anyway, I have it now!
are you the author of this app?

zeno

Sure am! I'll fix the app's arithmetic (32MB is more than 33000MB).

Dave Mitchell (aka Zeno)

whim

@Pelican
@zeno

Thanks !

I've added links to your posts and programs to the first post

cheers,

wim

zeno

@n00bE
I've fixed the 32GB bug and also properly excluded Terabyte-sized hard disks (a bug I discovered thanks to you!).

joachimrs

hey,

thanks for great work. Ive been trying to use MacBoot to prepare my SDcard to run MagicLantern on my Canon 550d. Ive followed the instructions and included the necessary files, but it wont work. What settings should I use in the MacBoot window? Ive changed the max. to 32gb.

Thanks!

zeno

@joachimrs

It's hard to tell what might be going wrong without more information. Turn debug on and run it again. Then email the contents of the log window to me (daveATzenoshrdlu.com) - hopefully I'll be able to see what's happening.

I should point out that all that MacBoot does is write some strings to the boot sector. It may well be doing that and the real problem is somewhere else. The log should tell me anyway.

Pelican

It seems exFAT filesystem needs further changes. The new EOScard modify the checksums and the backup VBR.
Please test it and share your experiences.

http://pel.hu/down/EOScard.exe

(and if it works we can change the topic title too... 😀)

zeno

Pelican - I'd like to make my MacBoot app support exFAT cards under OSX if at all possible. I see over in the Magic Lantern forum some discussion of the issue - could you point me at a document that outlines what needs to be done?

By the way, the problem joachimrs reported above turned out not be to in MacBoot.

Pelican

zeno
Pelican - I'd like to make my MacBoot app support exFAT cards under OSX if at all possible. I see over in the Magic Lantern forum some discussion of the issue - could you point me at a document that outlines what needs to be done?

I've found useful info in this PDF:
http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/forensics/reverse-engineering-microsoft-exfat-file-system_33274
But without testing, I'm not sure whether it's working or not.

Edit:
I've got feedback. It works. 😎
Guide: http://magiclantern.wikia.com/wiki/EXFAT_rerated_stuf

zeno

Thanks Pelican - I'd found http://shullich.blogspot.com/2009/12/vbr.html which looked useful.

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