Hi all, I will be formatting my PC in a few weeks so I'm just prepping everything beforehand. I just have a few questions, why is the ISO from the MCT differ in size compared to the TechBench one. The MCT iso is much smaller than the TB one, also when i generate a checksum for the MCT iso there are zero results in google. Is this iso specifically made for me? Another thing, how safe is the TB iso? I have used them in the past but stopped because they kept uploading preview builds which I am fully against but I see the latest 21H2 they uploaded is the same build as the MCT. Thanks.
MCT uses install.esd (30-33% compression compared to install.wim inside MVS/TB ISOs). It's officially MSFT released. Insider Preview ISOs on techbench have Insider Preview in the ISO filename/. And only dev channel insider preview ISOs are real Insider Preview ISOs, the ones from the 21Hx (release preview channel) and 22000.xxx (beta channel) range are ok to use.
Oh ok, It's a bit confusing because the current ISO on TB for 21H1 (10.0.19043.928) has this description on Wiki: Beta Channel and Release Preview Channel: April 13, 2021
When the ISO is made available after the release of the major base build (like 1904x.xxxx or 22000.1) then it's just early access and not like dev channel builds which really are test builds.
Thank you, I will download the 21H2 from TB, as I preffer a 1:1 copy and not a compressed ISO. I'm sad MS removed the exploit to download the ISO from their website using the inspector in chrome and changing the device settings.
The MCT creates the iso 'on the fly' and so the checksum will always be different so no static m$ values to verify.
If you create an iso via the MCT, and as it downloads directly from m$ servers the components to make the ISO/Image, then it can be safe to say it is 'genuine' even if no valid way to check against a known checksum value.