pbatard
commented
2 years ago What is Rufus doing when it formats the NTFS partition that is different to the Format dialog in Windows Explorer?
Nothing. Rufus is calling on the same formatting APIs that Windows uses, so formatting using the default dialog or Rufus should not produce any difference in the file system itself.
However, one thing that you may not be doing is ensuring that the NTFS file system is properly unmounted before you eject the drive (because a drive that was not cleanly unmounted leads to all kind of issues, though I'd expect UEFI:NTFS to complain then rather than the Windows installer), which is part of the reason why Rufus calls on checkdisk after it's done. That's the NTFS Fixup (Checkdisk)... part you see in the log.
IIRC, I had some issues with some NTFS formatted drives unless I forces a checkdisk, but that was long before I added the UEFI:NTFS functionality. Or it may be that you're missing some files when extracting the content or something.
Also, if you're trying to replicate the creation of Windows bootable media from Linux, you may want to have a look at what WoeUSB does, because they've definitely managed to sort out your issue, and you might be able to find precisely what step you are missing in their source.
andrewdbate
JonnyTech
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<FULL LOG>below.Rufus version: x.y.z- I have NOT removed any part of it.Additionally (if applicable):
(✓)button to compute the MD5, SHA1 and SHA256 checksums, which are therefore present in the log I copied. I confirmed, by performing an internet search, that these values match the ones from the official image.Issue description
I have a question (rather than an issue) about Rufus. I hope that is okay.
I am trying to reverse engineer Rufus' workings so that I can port a subset of the functionality to Linux (mostly the ability to create bootable USBs with the UEFI:NTFS bootloader).
I have read the FAQ, readme, issue tracker, the relevant source code, and I now reasonably understand what is involved. I now have determined (what I think is) the sequence of steps needed to create such as USB on Linux, however, I have encountered one issue that totally has me stumped.
I cannot understand why I am observing the following behaviour:
If I create a bootable USB from
Win10_21H2_EnglishInternational_x64.isodownloaded from the Microsoft website here, using Rufus with the default options, everything works as expected when attempting to boot from the USB with my ThinkPad T440 connected to its docking station. So far so good (so Rufus works as expected).However, if I take this USB drive, and then format the NTFS partition from Windows Explorer (by right-clicking the drive, choosing
Format..., and formatting with NTFS accepting the defaults), and then copy the contents of the ISO to the USB, when I attempt to boot from the USB on the ThinkPad T440 with the dock I get a BSOD (blue screen of death) with error code0xc000021a. See attached screenshot.I have tried this multiple times, with different USB memory sticks, and the same behaviour always reproduces.
So my question is this: What is Rufus doing when it formats the NTFS partition that is different to the
Formatdialog in Windows Explorer?Other things I have tried to figure out what is going on
To try to narrow down what is the cause, I created a bootable Windows USB using Rufus as above with the same ISO, then deleted all files on the NTFS partition, and then extracted
Win10_21H2_EnglishInternational_x64.isoto the partition (in order to test the file copying, or whether Rufus was adding/removing some files). The ThinkPad T440+dock is able to boot from this no problem.So the problem is not how I am copying the files to the partition. It must be in the formatting of the partition. It is only when I first reformat the NTFS partition in Windows with the Format dialog and then extract the ISO that I get the above BSOD.
I have also tried formatting the partition with
mkfs.ntfson Linux before copying the Windows ISO files, but I still get the BSOD on that one machine. I have also tried formatting to NTFS with GParted before copying the Windows ISO files, but I still get the BSOD. Clearly Rufus must be doing something different when it formats to NTFS.Therefore Rufus must be doing something special/magic/different when it creates the NTFS partition vs what Windows does from the
Format...dialog.I can see from the source code and the log that Rufus uses the IFS API, but I would have naively assumed that the Format dialog would have done something similar.
Summary
I appreciate that this is not a bug in Rufus (because Rufus works as expected), however, I could not find any documentation for what Rufus is going that is special/different, nor could I see anything relevant in the source code when I read what I thought was the relevant parts.
I would appreciate any advice because I need to recreate the same behaviour if I am to port to Linux.
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