Set EEPROM to initial values when flashing ESP8266

Question

I have a variable uint8_t a_ram which needs to be initialized from the EEPROM variable a_eeprom when the ESP boots up. Whenever a_ram changes, the new value has to be stored to the EEPROM (a_eeprom), so that the ESP will initialize a_ram to this new value after the next reboot.

The problem I have is to understand, how the value of a_eeprom can be initialized for the very first boot. If a_eeprom has not been set before (that means, that a_ram has not been stored to EEPROM yet), my variable will be initialized to 0, which must not be the case.

I could introduce an extra variable to the EEPROM (kind of a flag), which tells me whether a_ram has been stored to EEPROM or not and only initialize a_ram to a_eeprom if that is the case. But as I don't want to spend this memory if it isn't neccessary, I'd like to know if there is a possibility to set an EEPROM value when flashing the ESP. Btw, I'm using the arduino IDE.

• Chris Stratton: First you should probably research how EEPROM is approximately emulated on a system that doesn't actually have any.
• Juraj: it is written to flash.to location after SPIFS
• Sim Son: @Juraj unfortunately I'm not very familiar with this topic. Could you give me a hint about what I should update myself if I did not understand your comment? ;)
• Sim Son: @ChrisStratton as far as I understand the ESP, it has an EEPROM onboard and does not only emulate it
• Chris Stratton: @SimSon - you are mistaken. The ESP8266 has no on-chip EEPROM, and most boards pair it with an SPI flash, not an EEPROM.