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addicted

Member

From: /home/addicted

Registered: 2016-07-13

Posts: 42

Question about switching to UEFI from Legacy ROM

I got p8z68 pro gen 3 Mobo which got partial UEFI.(it has no secure boot or related setting)
I'm using it with Legacy ROM mode since i bought it.(i got no knowledge about UEFI when i bought it)

Is there any advantage with UEFI over Legacy ROM? what are pros n cons

cons: i think i have to format all my MBR partitioned internal HDD with GTP?

anymore things to consider?

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,349

Re: Question about switching to UEFI from Legacy ROM

You are not limited to four primary partitions. 
With UEFI, you don't need a boot loader.

But, who cares.  If it boots, why muck with it?  After you are booted it does not matter any more.

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addicted

Member

From: /home/addicted

Registered: 2016-07-13

Posts: 42

Re: Question about switching to UEFI from Legacy ROM

Thanks.
who wants to make 10 100GB partition.
seems like i'm not gonna gain anything from switching.
Current setup works just fine.gonna stick with it.

just read this https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 0#p1646370.Thought UEFI may have some other advantage

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: Question about switching to UEFI from Legacy ROM

Read this: https://www.happyassassin.net/2014/01/2 … work-then/

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headkase

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 1,983

Re: Question about switching to UEFI from Legacy ROM

The only practical advantage of UEFI over BIOS is that your UEFI boot drive can be larger than 2TB and you can have hundreds of GPT partitions on a single drive where with BIOS you only have 4 primary.

However, if you don't have large drives and don't need hundreds of partitions: go with BIOS, definitely.  The reason is two-fold, one, once you are fully booted it doesn't matter how you started, and two, self-defense: if you're in UEFI mode then the NVRAM data in your mainboard is mounted within your Linux file-system.  Either by accident or by malicious design a program could delete those entries.  By the standard you should be able to recover from that but not all mainboards follow the standard to the letter and you can end up with a permanently bricked system.  BIOS mode exposes you to less risk than UEFI mode does under Linux.

Alad

Wiki Admin/IRC Op

From: Bagelstan

Registered: 2014-05-04

Posts: 2,420

Website

Re: Question about switching to UEFI from Legacy ROM

The 2TB distinction and amount of partitions is related to GPT only, not UEFI. You can boot in BIOS mode with GPT partitioning:

There are two ways to boot a GPT-formatted disk on a BIOS system.
Hybrid booting, and the new GPT-only booting protocol originally
proposed by the author, and later adopted by the T13 committee in
slightly modified form.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/joyen … oc/gpt.txt

There are some limitations to this model, such as Windows not allowing it and rare firmware issues, but otherwise it's a perfectly valid approach.

For some history on MBR and why you might not want it, see: http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/DiskTerms.htm

Last edited by Alad (2016-08-10 19:21:25)

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