UEFI BIOS can be said to be the successor of legacy BIOS, that is, the offspring of traditional BIOS. The mainstream model of the future.

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The difference between MBR and GPT:

1. Traditional MBR supports up to 2TB single partition, and up to 4 main partitions can be set.

2.GPT supports a single partition of more than 2TB, and theoretically, 128 main partitions can be set (4k alignment of hard disk has nothing to do with GPT, and AHCI has nothing to do with GPT).

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When can I use UEFI+GPT mode to install the system?

First of all, we must understand; Win7/8 64-bit system +UEFI can be started in GPT.

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At present, there are still many systems installed in the traditional legacy+MBR mode!

Because the hard disk of home notebook or desktop is generally not more than 1TB, generally only one or two main partitions can be established.

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Partition table knowledge point

1.MBR partition table: master boot record, that is, partition table of hard disk master boot record, only supports hard disks with capacity below 2. 1TB, and hard disks with capacity exceeding 2. 1TB can only manage 2. 1TB, and only supports four main partitions or three main partitions and one extended partition at most. There can be multiple logical partitions under the extended partition.

2.GUID partition table: GPT (Global Unique Identification Partition Table), which has no limit on the number of partitions compared with the limit of four partition table entries in MBR, but Windows only supports 128 GPT partitions, and the size of hard disk that GPT can manage reaches 18EB. Only motherboards based on UEFI platform support GPT partition boot.

3.ESP partition: EFI system partition, used for computer systems with EFI BIOS, and used for starting the operating system. Partition memory stores boot management programs, drivers, system maintenance tools, etc. If the computer adopts EFI system, or uses the current disk to start the operating system on EFI platform, it is recommended to use ESP partition.

4.MSR partition: Microsoft reserved partition, which is a partition that reserves space for backup on GPT disk. For example, when converting a disk into a dynamic disk, you need to use these partition spaces.

5. Secure boot function: New security functions have been added in Windows 8. UEFI BIOS has built-in security boot to fight against malware infected with MBR and BIOS. Windows 8 will use SecureBoot by default. During startup, any module to be loaded must be signed (forced), UEFI firmware will be verified, and modules without signature or verification will not be loaded.

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Advantages of UEFI: UEFI's full name is "Unified Extensible Firmware Interface", which is a standard that describes the type interface in detail. This interface is used to automatically load the operating system from the pre-boot operating environment to the operating system. The advantages of UEFI are as follows:

Error-correcting features: Significantly different from BIOS, UEFI adopts modular, C-language-style parameter stack transfer mode and dynamic link mode to build the system, which is easier to implement than BIOS and has stronger fault-tolerant and error-correcting features, thus shortening the system development time. More importantly, it runs in 32-bit or 64-bit mode, which breaks through the addressing ability of traditional 16-bit code, reaches the maximum addressing of the processor, and overcomes the shortcoming of slow running of BIOS code.

Compatibility: Unlike BIOS, the driver of UEFI system is not composed of code running directly on CPU, but written in EFI bytecode. Java exists in the form of "bytecode", and it is this one-step intermediate mechanism that makes Java run on various platforms. UEFI has also learned from similar methods. EFI bytecode is a set of virtual machine instructions driven by UEFI, which must be interpreted and run in the UEFI driver running environment, so as to ensure complete backwards compatibility.

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Mouse operation: UEFI has built-in graphics drive function, which can provide high-resolution color graphics environment. Users can click to adjust their configuration after entering, and everything is as simple as operating application software under Windows system.

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Powerful scalability: UEFI will adopt modular design, which is logically divided into two parts: hardware control and OS (operating system) software management. All UEFI versions have hardware control, and OS software management is actually a programmable open interface. With this interface, motherboard manufacturers can realize a variety of rich functions. For example, various familiar backup and diagnosis functions can be realized through UEFI, and motherboards or firmware manufacturers can take them as a big selling point of their products. UEFI also provides a powerful networking function, and other users can reliably diagnose your host remotely without entering the operating system.

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Graphical interface: At present, UEFI mainly consists of these parts: UEFI initialization module, UEFI driver execution environment, UEFI driver, compatibility support module, UEFI high-level application and GUID disk partition.