W8 sucks, but Linux is even worst

[Magnum]

Andy,

http://tuxdiary.com/2014/07/23/linux-distros-with-uefi-support/

your link is okay, but the tricky thing is to search in another direction. What if you would like to have several operating systems on the same machine? Which boot manager is to use? How to configure the boot manager etc.

Gunther

Grub4dos comes with Linux and is a great boot manager.

It detects all Operating Systems on your hard drive and creates a boot up menu where you select which O.S. you want.

I have XP, Puppy, and LINUX Tahr.

Their journaled filesystems are superior and more stable than NTFS.

[Gunther]

Andy,

Grub4dos comes with Linux and is a great boot manager.

that's true, but I used 2 years ago GRUB 2.0, because it was at this time the only available boot manager which could handle UEFI in a correct manner. That was very tricky, believe me.

Gunther

[Magnum]

I am pretty sure you can turn off UEFI in your BIOS.

[Gunther]

Andy,

I am pretty sure you can turn off UEFI in your BIOS.

yes, of course, but in that case has my 3 TB disk only a size of 2 TB. That's a waste of disk space, isn't it?

Gunther

[Magnum]

Why does that reduce your disk space. ??

[Gunther]

Andy,

Why does that reduce your disk space. ??

a hard disk with the classic Master Boot Record is limited to 2 TB. More isn't possible. Disabling UEFI means using the MBR. That's the simple reason.

Gunther

[Magnum]

What a bummer. :-(

It must take quite a while to deframent it ?

[hutch--]

Gunther,

Here is a question, as I only have 2 tb disks in current machines and partition them in half, if you started with a 4 tb disk, can you partition it to a number of smaller sizes without wasting the disk capacity ?

[dedndave]

i can answer that one....

any volume over about 2.2 TB requires something other than MBR
for windows, that means GPT (GUID Partition Table)

i use XP, which does not natively support GPT
but, i have a Paragon (gpt_loader) driver installed that does support it

i doubt that i would be able to boot from a GPT drive, though

[dedndave]

i might go on to mention that problems may arise if a GPT formatted drive is installed into a system that doesn't support it....
for example, an external USB drive formatted under Win7, then connected to an XP machine   :icon_eek:
i learned this the hard way - lol

the GPT format allows the first sector to be a protective or legacy MBR record
the "real" GPT tables start on the next sector
so, let's say we GPT format a drive under windows 7 at 3 TB
now, we connect it to an XP machine
it is "corrected" to a very small drive
you reconnect the drive to the windows 7 machine, but the new "corrected" size is in force
you just lost a shit-load of data

[Gunther]

Hutch,

i can answer that one....

any volume over about 2.2 TB requires something other than MBR
for windows, that means GPT (GUID Partition Table)

that's the tricky point. I had to figure out that the hard way. GRUB 2.0 was the only boot manager during that time which could handle UEFI with GPT. The configuration was a real mess. Today we've GRUB for DOS which is very easy to handle.

Gunther