Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?
On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 19:33:42 (-0500), Felix Miata wrote:
> The Wanderer composed on 2021-03-07 19:16 (UTC-0500):
> > On 2021-03-07 at 19:04, David Christensen wrote:
>
> >> I can see how GPT labels would be useful for system drives, but I use
> >> BIOS/MBR because it is the lowest common denominator and I can move
> >> system drives between machines of varying age.
My oldest PC, built in 2000, had no problem booting from a GPT disk.
It was an Intel Seattle2 SE440BX-2 mobo with a Pentium III
(Coppermine) CPU, hosting two PATA disks.
I'm guessing that Grub gets itself installed in the protective MBR,
and once Grub is running, it doesn't care what kind of disk it is.
I was careful to set the disk up with the necessary partitioning:
Part # filesys size code rôle
gina - 1007KiB partition table and alignment space
gina01 - 3MiB EF02 BIOS Boot
gina02 FAT32 496MiB EF00 EFI system
gina03 ver 1 500MiB 8200 Swap (random-key encrypted)
gina04 ext4 29 GiB 8300 Gina-A (buster 64bit)
gina05 ext4 29 GiB 8300 Gina-B (buster 32bit)
gina06 ext4 406 GiB 8300 /home (LUKS2)
IOW, it has a BIOS Boot partition for Grub to use. The ESP gina02
is as yet unused, and Gina-A/gina04 will be used in the disk's new
residence. RIP wasp: its PSU gave out.
> > That'll probably stop working past a certain point, at least for some
> > machines. On recent Intel chipsets, Dell has stopped supporting booting
> > from internal hard drives except in UEFI/GPT mode (as in, they no longer
> > offer a setting for it, and their boot-device selection menus won't let
> > you do it), and I gather that Intel's newer chipsets are going to stop
> > including support for the UEFI components that permit MBR-based boot in
> > the relatively-near future (if they haven't in fact done that already).
>
> > At which point you'll need to maintain two categories of system drives:
> > ones which can work on older machines, prior to that dropping of
> > support, and ones which can work on newer machines, subsequent to the
> > addition of UEFI/GPT booting.
I thought that would be the case here, but none of my BIOS machines
has had problems with disks after reformatting them as GPT. All have
had ESP and BIOS Boot partitions included for future-proofing. The
survival of some of the PATA ones now depends on how long I have
interfaces available. Fortunately, I do have a PATA caddy container
with USB, but it's noisy and slow.
> > Isn't progress fun?
>
> Same kind as when Intel stopped providing PS/2 ports on its motherboards (and
> chipset support?). I haven't bought an Intel motherboard since. There are plenty
> competitors who know people like their quality ancient PS/2 keyboards that don't
> work with USB adapters.
Just as wasp expired, I acquired a Dell Precision T3500. It must be one
of the last BIOS machines (November 2011), but the good news is that it
has PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, so my ancient IBM keyboard, and a
3-button Logitech mouse, won't be orphaned after all. That was a surprise.
Cheers,
David.
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