I am about to buy a new m/b - an Intel Socket 1150 based one. However I am a little confused about UEFI. My discs are partitioned in the good old fashioned way using fdisk.

Is UEFI something I can turn off? If the answer is "on some motherboards" is there a keyword I can find in the blurbs which gives me the answer?

Help appreciated. Thanks.

Most mbs can be set for legacy MBR support or UEFI or a combination in the BIOS setup. I'd search using the model number of the specific mb, as in eg "ASUS Maximus Extreme IV" (or whatever) and UEFI BIOS and Legacy booting. You can usually read the manual online before buying. Or you can post the model number here and ask. Or you can get a suggestion from someone who recommends a mb. Hope that helps.

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This article from the Arch Wiki might help:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UEFI_Bootloaders

UEFI is not inherently a problem.

It's the Microsoft "secure(d) boot" add-on that is.

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i too was faced with the same situation a few months back when I upgraded my old 939 chipset server to a newer system. i was able to disable the UEIF with ease. same thing for all three of my newest laptops (same model Asus product: K55A (ASUS-NotebookSKU), just had to disable the UEIF in BIOS before I installed Fedora 19 on those laptops.

my server runs CentOS 6.x also with zero issues after disabling UEIF in the BIOS.

from what I understand UEIF must be able to be disabled in order to follow IEEE standard. so you should always be able to disable secure boot, that MS is now breaking.

while secure boot is not a bad idea, MS has corrupted it like they do just about everything they touch.

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if you're talking about UEFI BIOS.

UEFI is a way to go,it supports larger capacity hard drives.

MBR is a legacy and can support up to 2TB only.

check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified...ware_Interface

text from link above:

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Some boards are UEFI + 'legacy BIOS'.

There is no way to know for sure if any given board will support legacy BIOS without checking the manufacturer.

While I'm not a huge fan of UEFI, it shouldnt be a problem with currently supported and future linux distros.

UEFI needs UEFI support. (provided that you arent running a motherboard with UEFI + legacy BIOS).

Secure boot should be disableable on most retail motherboards.

Who cares about 2TB+ booting when small and super fast SSDs are common?

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i can't disagree with you, if you got big bucks then shouldn't be a problem. SSDs are very good no need to worry about vibration.

I just recently upgraded a server with SATA hard drives from 2TB to 12TB, it's running with MBR but able to find a work around to make it working.

And for MBR, if you configure a RAID array larger than 2TB. It will not recognize more than 2TB, it's not just about booting.

Many thanks for the inputs.

I tripped out of the house this morning and was soon an the only shop in Malta which seems to sell AMD kit.

Typically I did not find the items I had painstakingly researched. However the sales assistant was a self confessed AMD freak so we put together:

Gigabyte F2A55M-DS2 motherboard. (The only alternative was an MSI)

AMD A10 6800K 4 core CPU (double my planned expense but the only one currently in stock)

4GB RAM (no 2GB sticks in stock)

Hardware works OK, BIOS does not seem to be UEFI.

I may be posting a problem on the graphics driver. Can't get it to work!

This is another reference that I found easy to understand.
http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/

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Oh, no....

Gigabyte F2A55M-DS2 use the A55 chipset. SATAII only, no SATAIII. 2 RAM slots, really limits your RAM expansion possibilities. It has a UEFI BIOS.

If the AMD A10 6800K was twice as much as you wanted to spend, AM3+ probably would have been overly expensive as well (th cheapest AM3+ CPU is normally about 2/3s the cost of the 6800K).

I'd almopst suggest that a intel LGA1155 system would be a better idea...but if you could only get a A55 chipset FM2, you'd probably be stuck with some dodgy H61 chipset (SATAII only as well) on LGA1155...

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@Cascade9

The board has a graphical BIOS page then pressing F1 takes me to the good old-fashioned menu type interface. The box says "Dual UEFI BIOS. The important thing is - there wasn't a problem.

You are right about SATA and RAM slots. The RAM is not a problem. I hardly, if ever, reach 2GB usage - I have an aversion to opening all those windows, a legacy of my Windows days when crashes were an expensive item.

I would have gone for mail order but with my main PC teetering on the brink and my second PC down I wanted to recover ASAP.

Thanks for the help. It beats "Format the drive and re-install Windows" which is the usual recipe for 90% of users.