ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

dwe11er · 2014-06-04 16:58:17

I've got ASRock Z87E-ITX mobo with UEFI. EFI System Partition is formated as FAT32 (on SSD) booting kernel via gummiboot or GRUB2. My problem is that partition isn't detected by UEFI on its own. Currently, to add entry to UEFI, I have to boot from LiveCD to Arch instance on disk and then run gummiboot/grub2 install.

Any ideas, why it's behaving this way?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2014-06-04 18:31:29

Is your ESP 512MiB?
Some motherboards won't recognise other sizes (my gf's laptop does this)...

dwe11er · 2014-06-04 19:28:35

It's 500MB. It recognizes Fedora LiveCD ESP tho (which spans over 8GB). I will try to grow it a bit.

EDIT:
Apparently it's detecting ESP on pendrives (both FAT16 and FAT32; size doesn't matter) but not the one on the disk

Last edited by dwe11er (2014-06-04 20:27:08)

surfatwork · 2014-06-06 20:27:52

check the boot flags and partition type

dwe11er · 2014-06-07 03:54:19

GPT doesn't have boot flag (at least not in MBR meaning); partition type is proper one (EF00 for ESP).

wkennington · 2014-06-16 06:52:35

Did you ever find a solution to this? I have an AsRock FM2A88X+ BTC with the exact same problem of the system detecting the efi partition over USB drives just fine, but not on any of my attached SATA disks.

dwe11er · 2014-07-08 13:04:46

wkennington wrote:

Did you ever find a solution to this? I have an AsRock FM2A88X+ BTC with the exact same problem of the system detecting the efi partition over USB drives just fine, but not on any of my attached SATA disks.

Nope, still hanging with backup ESP on my good ol' MuVo

phred14 · 2014-10-06 14:22:34

I've gotten this working. I'm actually a Gentoo user, but found this topic when searching on my new board. I've registered here so I could give you my solution. This had me tearing my hair out for a week, before I got it, almost by accident.

I used a USB install of SystemRescueCD to install my Gentoo, along with rEFInd for a boot manager. I ran the rEFInd installation script, but every time it gave me some hate mail about mis-named things, and running "efibootmgr -v" verified that it had indeed not updated the motherboard with information about my hard drive. However when booting SystemRescueCD in UEFI mode I noticed that it had my new Gentoo install listed there, so I booted it. At that point I had to install Gentoo's efibootmgr package, and at that point I could run the rEFInd install script, and it worked. Running "efibootmgr -v" verified the new boot entry.

I can now boot my newly installed hard drive. All I can figure is that there was something fishy about booting SystemRescueCD, even if in UEFI mode, that wouldn't let it update the EFI vars on the motherboard. But since it let me boot my new install, I was all set.

There were stunningly few diagnostics provided during the process.

dwe11er · 2014-11-27 12:58:19

Hmm, it seems that, in my case, UEFI don't detect ESP on SSD only - I did clonezilla image of SSD and restored it on HDD with positive result.

vi2nano · 2014-12-09 05:52:38

Try to make sure the SATA controller is set to AHCI Mode. I have a Fatal1ty Killer Mobo made by ASRock as well and it will do that if I have it in IDE or RAID mode.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-06-04 16:58:17

ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#2 2014-06-04 18:31:29

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#3 2014-06-04 19:28:35

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#4 2014-06-06 20:27:52

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#5 2014-06-07 03:54:19

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#6 2014-06-16 06:52:35

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#7 2014-07-08 13:04:46

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#8 2014-10-06 14:22:34

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#9 2014-11-27 12:58:19

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

#10 2014-12-09 05:52:38

Re: ASRock's UEFI won't detect EFI System partition

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