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UEFI BIOS: what can't it do?


videobruce

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I'm discovering (the hard way) this supposed new & improved BIOS deal isn't what's it cracked to be. Is the following a across the board list of what this can't do?

1. The initial boot screen, the one where you can clearly see all the attached drives, flashes by in a second preventing one from seeing anything in a blink of a eye? is there a way to pause this so I can see if all the drives are there without going into the BIOS like it use to be?

2. The 'home page' (or main page if you like) doesn't show the drives either, just the processor & memory which makes that mostly useless. You have to hunt around and go into a sub menu to find that out.

3. There is no ability to isolate SATA ports, it's either all or none which kinda makes that useless if one wants to hide one or two drives for whatever reason.

More questions when I come across more issues.

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Well you are assuming that ALL EFI/UEFI are the same (they are not).

As a matter of fact there are now MORE different EFI/UEFI intefaces than stars in the sky.

With BIOSes, there were three or four "providers" and each PC maker made mostly "little changes" with EFI/UEFI each motherboard manufacturer seems to have his own way (slightly or very) different from all the others.

Which exact PC/Motherboard are you dealing with?

jaclaz

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Yes different manufacturers are definately different. For example, Intel's UEFI boards are easier to work with than Asus'. Its mainly about how their "BIOS" screens are laid out. Asus has more things you need to enable/disable to get UEFI boot working.

Most manufacturers using UEFI now have a graphical BIOS that supports mouse and even the scroll wheel. There is typically an option to enter Advanced Mode which lets you see the screens in a more familiar layout. Intel, Asus and MSI BIOS screens are like this.

About the SATA port isolation, I'm not sure what you mean. Typically you only get to disable the eSATA ports, but some higher end boards have multiple Storage Controllers letting you disable the onboard ports assigned to them.

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Which exact PC/Motherboard are you dealing with?

It's a ASRock 990FX Extreme 4.



About the SATA port isolation, I'm not sure what you mean. Typically you only get to disable the eSATA ports, but some higher end boards have multiple Storage Controllers letting you disable the onboard ports assigned to them.

That's what I told the OP, best thing he can do is just enable or disable a drive letter if he likes to hide something...

This is part of http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163777-asrock-990fx-ext-4-mb-owners;-questions/

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Well you are assuming that ALL EFI/UEFI are the same (they are not).

There are always some differences, but so far with ASRock (first hand) Asus & Gigabyte (second hand through their support number and reading the manuals) all three seem to suffer the same shortcomings.

Intel's UEFI boards are easier to work with than Asus'

Well, considering it was Intel's design, there is no surprise here.

About the SATA port isolation, I'm not sure what you mean. Typically you only get to disable the eSATA ports, but some higher end boards have multiple Storage Controllers letting you disable the onboard ports assigned to them.

Having more than one bootable drive can cause issues, especially when one tries ti loads a O/S on one drive with the others visible. Data get cross installed in more than one drive. It has happened to me more than once with different O/S's. The other drives have to be either disabled or disconnected which is very inconvenient.

That's what I told the OP, best thing he can do is just enable or disable a drive letter if he likes to hide something...

That solves nothing. It's disabling the drive at boot time is the issue.

You guys never had more than one bootable drive in your systems?? I don't mean running more than one O/S on a single partition either.

One drive goes down, you have a instant backup. You alos have easy access to system files to correct possible problems without using a 3rd party boot disk.

Edited by videobruce
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