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Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: inf3rno on August 30, 2015, 12:57:34 pm

Title: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: inf3rno on August 30, 2015, 12:57:34 pm
I have this old motherboard: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3316#ov (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.
Title: Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: shadowsports 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.     
Title: Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: inf3rno 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.
Title: Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: shadowsports 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.
Title: Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: inf3rno 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?
Title: Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: Tiger 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.
Title: Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: inf3rno 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.
Title: Re: Is it possible to have GPT boot with this s775 motherboard?
Post by: inf3rno 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...