Windows 8.1, BIOS or UEFI install

Energize · 6 Oct 2014 at 13:55

AthlonXP1800 said:
BIOS only supported MBR, older UEFI supported both MBR and GPT but new and future UEFI will supported GPT only.

Hard drives bigger than 2TB single partition will use GPT and in near future 2TB SSD will use GPT too.

Well that's a step backwards since some widely used software doesn't support GPT formatted partitions.

OspreyO · 6 Oct 2014 at 14:03

Energize said:
Well that's a step backwards since some widely used software doesn't support GPT formatted partitions.

Maybe you could elaborate. I don't follow.

Cromulent · 6 Oct 2014 at 16:21

I use UEFI. Was a bit of pain originally getting Arch Linux to dual boot with Windows 8.1 but once you get used to UEFI rather than the BIOS things actually work quite well.

Now I don't see the point at all of using BIOS when UEFI has a nicer menu screen and supports larger hard drive partitions through GPT. No reason at all to be stuck with the BIOS as far as I am concerned.

Energize · 7 Oct 2014 at 14:14

OspreyO said:
Maybe you could elaborate. I don't follow.

Disk encryption software like Truecrypt for example, doesn't support GPT partition tables, so removing support for MBR partition tables means the loss of software compatibility. This is especially important because such software has many advantages over Windows software such as bitlocker.

OspreyO · 7 Oct 2014 at 14:26

Ah thats good to know. I do use Truecrypt. But thats a dead product now. I suppose you'd be using whats built into W8 now or bitlocker.