Bios boot partition question

[Marko Vojinovic]

On Sunday 13 November 2011 19:24:19 Tom Horsley wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:11:03 +0000 Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> > Now, I gather from the text above that the boot partition is necessary
> > only for "non-EFI" systems with a "GPT-labelled" disk. What does this
> > mean? How can I check whether my system is EFI or no, and whether the
> > disk is using GPT labels or not?
> 
> All excellent questions which I would have thought deserved at least
> a bit of text in the release notes rather than just firing a barrel
> full of acronyms at you :-).

Yes, that's exactly how I felt when I read that... ;-)

> Basically though, if you are using an existing disk that is
> already partitioned, you don't have a GPT disk. Apparently
> GPT is a brand new partitioning scheme that breaks free of
> the old DOS scheme (and is necessary to take advantage of
> the disks bigger than 2TB that are getting common these days).
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

Ah, ok, this was useful to read, thanks! :-)
 
> If you actually needed a bios boot partition and didn't make
> one, your system would not boot (I know from experience :-).

Ok, so the bottomline in my case is that I have an ordinary 120 GB disk which 
was previously already partitioned in old-style MBR fashion, so it can also 
boot the "old way" and doesn't require the bios boot partition. Also, I have 
nothing to worry about for the future, unless I migrate to a disk bigger than 
2 TB (which is not going to happen soon on this laptop...).

Ok, that settles that. Thanks for clarifying.

Best, :-)
Marko