Installing and running ReactOS on modern hardware

[Thomas Mueller]

I would like to build and install ReactOS from source but may be strapped for where to
install it.
I have USB sticks, 3 TB SATA hard drives, and 3 TB USB 3.0 hard drive.
Hard drives are GPT-partitioned, which ReactOS apparently doesn't support.
I have some old IDE hard drives which I access with USB 2.0 enclosure: 1271 MB and 40 GB.
I also have an old 341 MB IDE hard drive that I can't read through USB 2.0 enclosure.
I could compile from Linux or FreeBSD with ROSBE, could do further builds that way or with
Wine and MinGW under Linux or FreeBSD.
I don't want to do heavy compiling on USB stick if I can avoid it.
I believe the only file system ReactOS currently supports is FAT16 or FAT32, which limits
possible partition size compared to NTFS or Linux or BSD file systems.
Can I install to USB stick, 4GB or 8 GB, and are there any other possibilities with my
hardware?
Tom

[David Quintana (gigaherz)]

First of all, I'm not an expert when it comes to what ReactOS supports in
terms of real hardware.
I believe (someone will correct me if I'm wrong), that ReactOS is not
currently able to boot from USB, and in fact, will fail to boot at all if
an incompatible USB controller (which is most of them, I think?) is
present. Burning a CD-ROM with the setup or livecd images, and possibly
disabling the USB controllers from your bios config, may give you better
results.
I'm assuming that your intention is to try ReactOS in real hardware,
otherwise it would be better advised to just use VMware, VirtualBox, or
QEMU, as those work mostly out of the box.
Ideally, your real-hardware testing platform should have a serial port, and
this serial port should be connected to another computer with a serial
port, by using a null-modem cable. This way you could see debug messages
through the serial port, and interact with the remote debugger driver when
(more than if) it crashes.
ReactOS currently only supports FAT32, because it's a simple driver that
does not need advanced features of the storage system. As the storage stack
improves, it will be possible to attempt using more complex drivers. We
already have an EXT2 driver, but last I heard it was not stable enough to
be able to boot from it.
That's all I know. If it's not enough, maybe someone with more experience
can add to it.
On 24 March 2014 09:56, Thomas Mueller <mueller6723(a)twc.com> wrote:
>   I would like to build and install ReactOS from source
> but may be strapped
>  for where to install it.
>  I have USB sticks, 3 TB SATA hard drives, and 3 TB USB 3.0 hard drive.
>  Hard drives are GPT-partitioned, which ReactOS apparently doesn't support.
>  I have some old IDE hard drives which I access with USB 2.0 enclosure:
>  1271 MB and 40 GB.
>  I also have an old 341 MB IDE hard drive that I can't read through USB 2.0
>  enclosure.
>  I could compile from Linux or FreeBSD with ROSBE, could do further builds
>  that way or with Wine and MinGW under Linux or FreeBSD.
>  I don't want to do heavy compiling on USB stick if I can avoid it.
>  I believe the only file system ReactOS currently supports is FAT16 or
>  FAT32, which limits possible partition size compared to NTFS or Linux or
>  BSD file systems.
>  Can I install to USB stick, 4GB or 8 GB, and are there any other
>  possibilities with my hardware?
>  Tom
>  _______________________________________________
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>  Ros-dev(a)reactos.org
>  http://www.reactos.org/mailman/listinfo/ros-dev
>