UEFI Boot - Is it worth it?

[Axonn]

Hello everybody. I got W7 x64 for OS and a Vertex 3 Max IOPS for storage on an Asus P8Z68 mobo.

My currently running W7 was installed normally I guess. But my SSD firmware is old so I have to update, and, since I'm doing that, I also prefer to secure-erase it.

So, since I'm reinstalling W7, tell me, should I preform an "UEFI install"? As in, install Windows with UEFI Boot? What are the benefits?

I know this is absolutely necessary for drives with more than 2.2 TB since GUID is used for the partition table. But my SSD is just 120 GB.

 

[Kenmitch]

I don't know if it helps but when I changed my ssd I did just because I could. Seems a little quicker but could be the placebo effect also.

 

[MrCrispy]

Windows install is same whether you have UEFI or Bios, but UEFI has a number of advantages.

 

[Axonn]

Such as?

 

[Kenmitch]

Such as?

Here is some info if you didn't look it up yet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface

 

[Axonn]

Kenmitch: It seems you haven't read my first post. I didn't ask what's UEFI. I asked about installing Windows 7 in a particular way.

My Mobo has UEFI and I know what UEFI is (I read that link ages ago ::- D ). But from what I understood... you can have Windows 7 installed in a non-UEFI way even though the computer is still powered by UEFI (when I go "into BIOS", I see the UEFI interface).

Having your platform driven by UEFI is a separate matter from having UEFI + a "UEFI Windows 7 install" as far as I understand. Am I wrong?

 

[jellowiggler]

I have never seen a uefi option inside the win 7 install.

Maybe you have this confused with ahci drive controller mode? In which case, make sure you have ahci turned on so your drives perform up to their potential.

 

[RU482]

yet another...do it because this link has information...answers

 

[Kenmitch]

Kenmitch: It seems you haven't read my first post. I didn't ask what's UEFI. I asked about installing Windows 7 in a particular way.

My Mobo has UEFI and I know what UEFI is (I read that link ages ago ::- D ). But from what I understood... you can have Windows 7 installed in a non-UEFI way even though the computer is still powered by UEFI (when I go "into BIOS", I see the UEFI interface).

Having your platform driven by UEFI is a separate matter from having UEFI + a "UEFI Windows 7 install" as far as I understand. Am I wrong?

My bad

Your correct.

Back to original post: If you don't feel like any of the benefits of a UEFI windows install would benefit you then there is no need to do go out of your way to do a UEFI windows install.

 

[Axonn]

jellowiggler: I'm talking about UEFI Boot:

http://usingwindowshomeserver.com/2010/11/24/uefi-installation-of-windows-7-video-edition/

RU482: Well, I already knew the UEFI advantages enumerated by Wiki:

Ability to boot from large disks (over 2 TiB)[11]
Faster boot-up
CPU-independent architecture
CPU-independent drivers
Flexible pre-OS environment, including network capability
Modular design

But I don't think that the article covers my question: there isn't a single mention about "UEFI boot" except something about HP which has no connection with my question ::- ).

If the link has information, please summarize for me. If I would have found it, I wouldn't have posted in the first place ::- D.

One more time: I know what UEFI is and my platform runs on it. Now the question is: will *WINDOWS 7* boot faster with UEFI? (as in: not the system POST-ing faster, but W7 loading faster).

Because I understand that UEFI boots faster, but I'm talking about the "UEFI BOOT" for Installing W7.

Kenmitch: for now, I still don't know what those benefits are ::- ). All benefits APPLY EVEN WITHOUT the UEFI Boot install. The stuff listed in Wiki is stuff which is inherent to UEFI and has no impact on the OS, other than the OS is able to use a larger HDD / can see more modern hardware properly.

 

[jellowiggler]

They seem to be equating a gpt booting drive (as opposed to the traditional mbr) drive with uefi. I'm not sure that is a 1:1. I'm pretty sure I have run large (over the 2.x tb limit) gpt boot drives with windows 7 systems on a board with a regular bios. Of course it was a board with gpt support.

 

[BFG10K]

I have never seen a uefi option inside the win 7 install.

It's there - you need a UEFI motherboard and a 64 bit version of Vista/7. When the installer first runs it asks you if you want to boot into UEFI mode.

The only real reason to do so (IMO) is if you want proper support for 2 TB+ HDDs. That's not going to be applicable for SSDs for a very long time.

 

[Coup27]

It's there - you need a UEFI motherboard and a 64 bit version of Vista/7. When the installer first runs it asks you if you want to boot into UEFI mode.

I just built a new rig with an Asus P8Z68-V LX and I have a retail copy of Windows 7. My installer never asked me.

Edit: Looks like you have to enable UEFI boot in UEFI first. Will check what mine is set to.

 

[Kenmitch]

I just built a new rig with an Asus P8Z68-V LX and I have a retail copy of Windows 7. My installer never asked me.

Edit: Looks like you have to enable UEFI boot in UEFI first. Will check what mine is set to.

With the Asus board it should give you the option to boot a UEFI bootable Windows install disc. I think it's on the setup landing page(easy) if I remember correctly. I setup mine a couple of months ago. If I remember you'll see your dvd-rom with efi logo on it.

Axonn: Searching around google there doesn't seem to be a whole lotta info on UEFI windows install. The way I see it is I don't think it would hurt anything just doing the UEFI install. Don't remember if I had to enable anything in bios first tho. It's possible you have to go into boot and then select it first. ???

Not sure if you landed on this microsoft page yet when searching or not but here's a link just in case you didn't.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463149.aspx

I did come accross some mentioning about UEFI and security related to rootkits. Something about UEFI being aware of what's going on in the pre-os enviroment

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...rootkits/1767d8bb-c679-44ff-8c49-fcf1d9e49d03

A google search for UEFI rootkit turns up alot of things.

 

[Coup27]

With the Asus board it should give you the option to boot a UEFI bootable Windows install disc. I think it's on the setup landing page(easy) if I remember correctly. I setup mine a couple of months ago. If I remember you'll see your dvd-rom with efi logo on it.

I went into the BIOS and in the top left Asus are calling it "Asus EFI BIOS". Thought EFI replaced BIOS?

Either way, the EZ screen (on mine) is totally useless and just displays some basic stats. I went through every option in advanced and it mentioned nothing of an EFI boot.

Also, my Win 7 retail is in the loft now but when I had it out the other day I did not remember seeing any EFI marking on the DVD.

 

[Kenmitch]

I went into the BIOS and in the top left Asus are calling it "Asus EFI BIOS". Thought EFI replaced BIOS?

Either way, the EZ screen (on mine) is totally useless and just displays some basic stats. I went through every option in advanced and it mentioned nothing of an EFI boot.

Also, my Win 7 retail is in the loft now but when I had it out the other day I did not remember seeing any EFI marking on the DVD.

Try booting into setup with the disc in. The easy screen shows bootable devices on bottom left side. If I remember correctly the DVD will have efi logo if it 's a efi bootable disc.Try it and see. I'm at work but I'll take a look when home if needs.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

I went into the BIOS and in the top left Asus are calling it "Asus EFI BIOS". Thought EFI replaced BIOS?

Either way, the EZ screen (on mine) is totally useless and just displays some basic stats. I went through every option in advanced and it mentioned nothing of an EFI boot.

Also, my Win 7 retail is in the loft now but when I had it out the other day I did not remember seeing any EFI marking on the DVD.

The naming convention may be a bit strange looking because we've always thought of BIOS as THE thing. Asus EFI Basic Input Ouput System does make sense. UEFI/EFI I'd still call just "bios" and not really think twice about it.

 

[mv2devnull]

With the Asus board it should give you the option to boot a UEFI bootable Windows install disc. I think it's on the setup landing page(easy) if I remember correctly. I setup mine a couple of months ago. If I remember you'll see your dvd-rom with efi logo on it.

My memory is hazy about how I did install to Asus P8P67 Pro (I had Linux in the mix). However, I think that I chose to load the EFI from the Win7 DVD and got EFI-install. I presume that if I had chosen to boot the DVD as "legacy BIOS", I had gotten MBR and non-EFI. So the board gave the install choices and the Windows installer did not.

 

[BFG10K]

I just built a new rig with an Asus P8Z68-V LX and I have a retail copy of Windows 7. My installer never asked me.

Edit: Looks like you have to enable UEFI boot in UEFI first. Will check what mine is set to.

When I last installed Windows on my system below it was there. I remember I couldn’t install Windows onto my existing MBR partitions when UEFI was selected, so I had to run the Windows installer again and choose a regular install.

 

[Kenmitch]

If I reboot into bios(UEFI) with a Win7 x64 install disc in my blu-ray drive it shows another drive as seen in the photo. The last one with the UEFI logo on it is only shown if a UEFI bootable media is in the drive on bootup. It does have to be detected on bootup so a reboot may be required for it to be seen. When I installed I just clicked it as far as I remember. Although when I just checked this it does look like a UEFI over-ride boot option for my blu-ray drive was listed on the boot page. I don't remember having to select anything as far as UEFI or regular install as it was a couple of months ago.

 

[Axonn]

Nice to see how it's done described in more detail. Thanks for the picture Kenmitch!

 

[Coup27]

okay, so I got my retail Windows 7 HP box out which was bought long before SP1 and there are no markings of any kind relating to UEFI or EFI on any of the discs or packaging or internal paperwork.

I did put the 64bit DVD in and go into the BIOS and it appeared as a seperate boot option. In boot order it was listed twice:

Sony Optiarc DVD/RW
Sony Optiarc DVD/RW (UEFI Install)

I decided to boot it and see what happens and I got to the partition screen and it said what BFG10K said. Could not install due to MBR and UEFI required GPT.

I presume by all of this I would have to erase the partitions on my SSD and make them again in GPT format and then reinstall? Also, my storage HDD is in MBR. It is only 1TB. Could that stay in MBR or would it need converting to GPT?

I've just read that MS white paper on the subject and there are quite a few benefits. It talks about faster boot. My system takes 20 seconds to boot from cold so I'm not sure if it will shave any off that. Decisions..

 

[Kenmitch]

okay, so I got my retail Windows 7 HP box out which was bought long before SP1 and there are no markings of any kind relating to UEFI or EFI on any of the discs or packaging or internal paperwork.

I did put the 64bit DVD in and go into the BIOS and it appeared as a seperate boot option. In boot order it was listed twice:

Sony Optiarc DVD/RW
Sony Optiarc DVD/RW (UEFI Install)

I decided to boot it and see what happens and I got to the partition screen and it said what BFG10K said. Could not install due to MBR and UEFI required GPT.

I presume by all of this I would have to erase the partitions on my SSD and make them again in GPT format and then reinstall. Whilst it's not taken long to set my new system up, is there any point redoing it all in UEFI? Axonn, what did you decide?

When I did mine I was using a brand new SSD. Not sure but I think I just deleted the partition and took the install from there.

Yes you would need to delete your partitions if you wanted to do the UEFI install. Of course you'd need to backup any data you need from them first.

As far as if UEFI install is needed or not or if it's worth the time to do another installation of windows I'm not sure. I just figured that if I was gonna do a new install on the new SSD wtf why not give it a try. I'm not sure if it's of any real benefit or not but figured it might possibly have some benefit now or in future windows updates.

 

[Axonn]

Actually, your post made me decide. I will try the GPT repartitioning. I am hoping that this may lead to some performance benefit. I can't be sure, but I will try. This is because I have to update my SSD firmware anyway... and I plan to do a Secure Erase anyway. So I will update this thread when I'm done - which is probably going to be 7 days from now, because I still need a bit more time to determine what AHCI drivers to use with my SSD - I'm having some problems with that.

BTW: I have exact numbers with how much my Windows takes to load (9 seconds + 10 seconds until it starts to load) as well as AS-SSD / ATTO / Crystal benchmarks. I will do comparisons once I'm on an UEFI install.

 

[Coup27]

BTW: I have exact numbers with how much my Windows takes to load (9 seconds + 10 seconds until it starts to load) as well as AS-SSD / ATTO / Crystal benchmarks. I will do comparisons once I'm on an UEFI install.

I'll keep my eye out for this.

Theres no doubt that UEFI has many architectural improvements over BIOS but whats visible to the end user may not be any different. If I was in your boat and I was secure erasing my drive then I would do it but I've got to do my whole install again. I've only just finished it lol.

Kenmitch - Could I leave my second drive in my system (1TB HDD) as MBR or would it need GPT also?