[SGVLUG] GPT! That's what I meant! ( it's a part of EFI ) Booting from a 3TB HDD issue

[matti]

Hi, a couple of notes from last nights presentations:

1) Coreboot:
AMD to support Coreboot!
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/05/09/1115235/AMD-To-Support-Coreboot-On-All-Upcoming-Processors
http://www.coreboot.org/Benefits

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coreboot



2) GPT:

Recall the Bios and Harddrive boot issues I briefly discussed..

Issues with Booting 3TB drives?

Here's what I read during my research:
"Master Boot Record partition tables can only address up to 232 blocks. With 512-byte sectors, that adds up to a maximum capacity of 2.19TB, ..
The storage industry's answer to the MBR's addressing limitation is the GUID Partition Table, or GPT,.. "

"if you want to use the (3TB HDD) as a boot drive, you'll need a 64-bit version of either OS and a motherboard with a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS."

This article was of talking about Windows OSes, still I would 
expect to need a updated BIOS on the MB I have.. so the
coreboot news i think is really good news.


more about GPT:
----------------------

GUID Partition Table

In computer hardware, GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a standard for the layout of the partition table on a physical hard disk. Although it forms a part of the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) standard (Intel's proposed replacement for the PC BIOS), it is also used on some BIOS systems because of the limitations of MBR partition tables, which restrict a disk partition's size to a maximum of 2.19 TB .. GPT allows for a maximum disk and partition size of 9.4 ZB..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

also checkout UEFI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface


note when researching I found this reference:

Booting Ubuntu Server 10.10 from 3TB Drive
http://freddyandersen.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/booting-ubuntu-server-10-10-from-3tb-drive/