Last Web page update: 6/26/2011, referencing GPT fdisk version 0.7.2
Note: This page is part of the documentation for my GPT fdisk program.
In theory, a computer using a BIOS can handle disks that use any partitioning system—MBR, GPT, BSD disklabels, or others. In practice, though, there are occasional BIOS/GPT quirks or even downright incompatibilities. Typically, a computer with a GPT disk won't boot or will boot very slowly because the BIOS power-on self-test (POST) takes an inordinately long time to finish. I've seen such reports in online forums and public bug-report systems, one user has e-mailed me with such a report, and I've encountered it at least once, and maybe twice, myself.
This behavior is quite peculiar, since as far as I know the BIOS should not attempt to read the disks, beyond verifying their presence and reading the boot code in the MBR. There are two specific bugs I'm aware of that cause this type of problem, but there may be others:
There may be other problems, too; many reports are vague, and my own ability to investigate is limited to the computers I own. It's conceivable that some boot loaders could become confused by GPT, so a GPT-incompatible boot loader could cause boot problems. My subjective impression is that most of the problems occur on Intel motherboards and can be corrected as described below. Even when I've been in physical possession of a board with a problem, investigations have proved difficult. In one case (a system with a dual-core AMD CPU and an AMI BIOS), booting was sluggish, but sped up when I made a random change to the GPT. To this day I'm not even sure if this was a GPT issue or something else. My attempts to re-create the problem have been unsuccessful.
Broadly speaking, there are two possible ways to work around such problems: Stick with the BIOS or abandon BIOS-style booting.
There are several possible remedies when booting a GPT disk on a BIOS-based computer. If your computer is completely unresponsive, you'll have to disconnect your hard disk from the computer and connect it in some other way or to another computer. I've heard of people successfully hot-plugging SATA drives after booting without the affected disk, but this is very risky with PATA drives. External enclosures or "naked" adapters to plug PATA or SATA disks into USB ports are good options. I recommend you try the following, in more-or-less the listed order, should you encounter such problems (but see below for an entirely different type of possible solution):
I can't guarantee that any of these actions will do any good on any particular system. These problems are rare and are not as yet well documented, at least not that I've found, so some of these suggestions are speculative.
An entirely different class of solution is possible with some boards: Abandon BIOS booting in favor of Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) or Unified EFI (UEFI) booting. This option exists with many Intel motherboards (in the BIOS setup utility, check the Boot menu for an option called UEFI Boot), sold in the past couple of years, and a few others. Until the spring of 2011, though, most motherboards did not support UEFI booting, so this option may not even be available to you. In 2011, though, most boards based on Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPUs included UEFI-capable firmware, although most don't advertise that fact. Many of the latest AMD motherboards are also UEFI-enabled. If a UEFI option is available, then in UEFI mode, the motherboard handles GPT partitions just fine, since GPT is part of the UEFI specification. This method is easiest to implement with a fresh OS installation—but only if the OS provides good UEFI installation support. I've tested Fedora 14 and 15, Ubuntu 11.04, and OpenSUSE 11.4 on UEFI-based systems. All worked, although they all also had problems, some of which I detail on this page. (Note that that page describes a "bleeding-edge" technology, although many of my distribution-specific comments apply to more conventional UEFI-based systems.) No doubt Linux distributions' UEFI support will improve in the future.
If you've got an existing OS installation, switching to (U)EFI booting will require changing your boot loader configuration. This is easy to do for Linux, provided you understand the needs and quirks of your (U)EFI-capable boot loader. (See the "Booting from GPT" page of this document for some comments on this issue.)
(U)EFI installations work best when the OS architecture is matched to the (U)EFI architecture. For most systems, this means using an x86-64 (aka AMD64) installation; however, some older Intel-based Macs use 32-bit EFIs.
If you're considering an MBR-to-GPT conversion, or even using GPT on a "fresh" disk that's never been partitioned, the fact that there can be problems such as I've described may give you pause. You may want to proceed with using GPT only if you have a ready means of recovery, such as access to a USB adapter so that you can plug the disk into the computer after it's booted another OS or a recovery CD. It should then be possible to recover the disk by making small changes to the partition table or boot loader, as described above. Keep in mind that, although I've encountered these problems once or twice, I own or owned six BIOS-based computers that use one or more GPT disks, and I've booted most of these with at least two or three different GPT layouts, so the incidence of problems seems to be no more than about 10%, and probably less than that. GPT-partitioned disks have been used for years on BIOS-based computers, particularly in some communities, such as the Hackintosh (Mac OS X on commodity PC hardware) community. Reports of GPT/BIOS incompatibilities in such communities are rare, suggesting that even a 10% problem incidence is a gross overestimate. On the other hand, it's possible that users are misattributing problems to other causes, such as boot loader bugs. Also, hybrid MBRs are common on Hackintoshes, which could help keep BIOS incompatibility problems in check.
Overall, I recommend you keep the potential for problems in mind, and have a recovery plan ready, but don't abandon plans to move to GPT if such a move presents real benefits to you.
If you've encountered this problem and have additional information to contribute concerning its causes or how to fix it, I'd like to hear from you. You can e-mail me at rodsmith@rodsbooks.com.
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