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Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?

Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« on: August 30, 2015, 12:57:34 pm »
I have this old motherboard: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3316#ov
Is it possible to boot with this motherboard from an SSD, which has 6 or more primary partitions? As far as I know MBR allows only 4 partitions, so I have to use GPT, but I don't know whether the F4 or F5d hybrid-BIOS of this motherboard supports GPT booting. I have currently F4 BIOS, and I don't want to upgrade to F5d, if it is not necessary, since it is a beta BIOS. I want to test different Linux distributions, that's why I need as many partitions as possible.

shadowsports

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Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« Reply #1 on: August 30, 2015, 06:05:11 pm »
Greetings,
Without getting into specifics.  In general, a GPT formatted boot drive (windows) needs a UEFI compatible BIOS.  Non boot drives (formatted GPT) don't need UEFI BIOS support. 

It may work without UEFI with some Linux distros but not all.     
« Last Edit: August 30, 2015, 06:13:17 pm by shadowsports »
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Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« Reply #2 on: August 30, 2015, 06:11:49 pm »
Greetings,
Without getting into specifics.  In general, a GPT formatted boot drive needs a UEFI compatible BIOS.  Non boot drives (formatted GPT) don't need UEFI BIOS support.

Hi!

I think it's evident, that we are talking about a GPT formatted boot drive.

shadowsports

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Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« Reply #3 on: August 30, 2015, 06:15:11 pm »
Yes, and I was just updating my post....  Multi-boot?...  as I said before.  Some may or may not work. Its not definitive and is changing rapidly.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2015, 06:16:17 pm by shadowsports »
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Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« Reply #4 on: August 30, 2015, 07:11:45 pm »
Yes, and I was just updating my post....  Multi-boot?...  as I said before.  Some may or may not work. Its not definitive and is changing rapidly.

From which BIOS version is GPT supported?

Tiger

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Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« Reply #5 on: August 30, 2015, 07:32:00 pm »
Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard? No

You have an old motherboard with a legacy BIOS. You can only boot with a MBR partition table. A GPT boot requires newer UEFI BIOS hardware not available on the GA-EP43T-USB3.
1) GA-Z97X-Gaming 7, G3258,
2) GA-990FXA-UD3 Rev. 1.1, FX-8350
3) GA-AM1M-S2P, Sempron 3850 Kabini

Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« Reply #6 on: August 30, 2015, 07:38:53 pm »
Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard? No

You have an old motherboard with a legacy BIOS. You can only boot with a MBR partition table. A GPT boot requires newer UEFI BIOS hardware not available on the GA-EP43T-USB3.

That's not entirely true. There are so called Hybrid EFI-s, which support GPT booting. I was curious maybe the F5d has this feature. As far as I can tell this technology was used around 2010-2011 maybe earlier. I am afraid you cannot help. I sent a technical question, maybe Gigabyte support answers it.
« Last Edit: August 30, 2015, 07:39:26 pm by inf3rno »

Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2015, 03:08:24 pm »
I tested F4 BIOS with a GPT HDD, and I successfully installed and booted 6 different Linux distributions. So it is okay. Most ppl confuse UEFI and GPT support, which are completely different things...