UEFI Big Drive question

[Stephen Morris]

On 05/13/2014 01:58 PM, Chris Murphy wrote:
> On May 12, 2014, at 3:05 PM, Stephen Morris <samorris at netspace.net.au> wrote:
>
>> On 05/12/2014 09:36 AM, Chris Murphy wrote:
>>> On May 9, 2014, at 6:05 PM, Stephen Morris <samorris at netspace.net.au> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The one limitation with GPT as I understand it is that in order to use GPT you must also have UEFI active in the Bios.
>>> No. First, BIOS ≠ UEFI they are not the same thing and it's easy to remember because there's nothing basic about UEFI. Second, while it's true GPT is defined in the UEFI spec, it's entirely up to the BIOS firmware implementation whether it'll work. There's no blanket proscription using GPT on BIOS computers, I have an old Dell Latitude laptop that permits booting with GPT partitioned drives.
>>>
>>> But there are enough firmwares out there that crater when encountering some aspect of GPT partitions, that on BIOS computers, the Fedora installer doesn't use GPT by default unless the drive is larger than ~2.2TB.
>>>
>>>>     From experience I have also found that you can't install the windows system partition on a GPT device and I thought I read somewhere that you also can't put Linux /boot on GPT either.
>>> The first part is true, the second part is not true. Windows' installer will only install and boot from GPT drives on UEFI computers, and boot from MBR drives on BIOS computers.
>> I'm probably a bit off topic here but Win 8 would not install on my machine onto a GPT device with UEFI enabled in the bios. I had to finish up configuring the partition on the 2TB hard disk with a DOS partition and also turn off UEFI because I could not boot my system because UEFI did not support my Nvidia GTX 650 graphics card.
> It's not off topic but the vernacular is incorrect, no doubt due to manufacturers who have been using it incorrectly. Many of them continue to refer to firmware updates for UEFI based firmwares as BIOS updates.
>
> If you have UEFI firmware you do not have a BIOS firmware. If you have BIOS firmware you don't have UEFI firmware. If you have UEFI firmware you can't enable or disable it, although some manufacturers have used this UI convention to indicate whether a UEFI Compatibility Support Module is to be used. The CSM presents an (emulated) BIOS interface to an OS, and it's there for legacy OS support for OS's like Windows XP which have no idea what UEFI is or how to talk to it.
>
> The fact your firmware with UEFI "enabled" (CSM disabled) caused Windows 8 install failure with a GPT is a bug either in the Windows 8 installer, or with the firmware. If you have already confirmed that you have the latest firmware applied to your hardware, I'd take my case to their support service because there's no good reason why you should have to install Windows 8 with a compatibility module enabled.
I'm leaning towards the bug being in the windows installer, as when I 
looked at the details for the error returned by the installer, the 
installer's explanation of the error was that it could not install on a 
GPT device, so given that it was the installer itself that was saying it 
couldn't do it I'd be leaning towards it as being the culprit.
The firmware in my motherboard did not support disabling UEFI out of the 
box, I had to get an update to provide that functionality. The update 
provided the ability to only use UEFI, only use Legacy Bios, to use UEFI 
first then legacy, or use Legacy first then use UEFI (this option 
doesn't really make a lot of sense). The ability to turn UEFI off was 
critical for my system as I could not use my graphics card with UEFI as 
it was not supported by the built in signature database, and being a 
relatively new purchase I was not prepared to buy another one, also from 
what I have read, if using multiple Linux distros its potentially 
critical to turn UEFI off. From what I have read Fedora was going to 
purchase the signature files from Microsoft (as I understand it the 
owner of UEFI, I have seen it stated explicitly to this effect) to 
enable UEFI support, whereas Ubuntu is going to go down the path of self 
signing rather than purchase the necessary licenses from Microsoft. I 
use both of these distributions as well as Win 8 on the one machine.

regards,
Steve
>
> Chris Murphy
>

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