GUID Partition Table (GPT) How to install an Operating System (OS) using the GUID Disk Partition Table (GPT) on an Intel® Hardware RAID (HWR) Array under uEFI environment. Revision 1.
Revision History Date December 2009 Revision Number 1.0 Modifications Initial release. Disclaimers Information in this document is provided in connection with Intel® products. No license, express or implied, by estoppel or otherwise, to any intellectual property rights is granted by this document.
Table of Contents Table of Contents 1. 2. Introduction to GUID Partition Table (GPT) .......................................................................1 1.1 What is a GPT disk? ........................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Why do we need GPT?.................................................................................................... 1 1.3 What’s a GPT Disk benefits?..........................................................
List of Figures List of Figures Figure 1 Boot Options ................................................................................................................... 3 Figure 2 EFI command ................................................................................................................. 4 Figure 3 EFI SAS Driver number .................................................................................................. 4 Figure 4 EFI SAS controller number ...................................
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Introduction 1. Introduction to GUID Partition Table (GPT) 1.1 What is a GPT disk? The GUID Partition Table (GPT) was introduced as a part of the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) initiative. GPT provides a more flexible mechanism for partitioning disks than the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme that has been common to PCs. A partition is a contiguous space of storage on a physical or logical disk that functions as though it were a physically separate disk.
Introduction 1.4 Provides greater reliability due to replication and cyclical redundancy check (CRC) protection of the partition table. Can be used as a storage volume on all x64-based platforms. Critical GPT data structures are stored twice on the disk: once at the start and again at the end. This behavior improves the odds of successful recovery in case of damage from an accident or a bad sector.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array 2. Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel HWR Array This document provides a step by step guide to install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® Hardware RAID, under uEFI environment. The BIOS Setup Configuration is done on an Intel® Server Board as an example. The OS installation is done with Microsoft Windows 2008* as an example. 2.1 Preparation Setup system with Intel® Server Board and Intel® Hardware RAID and 4 x 1TB HDDs.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array 2. Reboot into EFI shell. 3. Type “drivers” to find out EFI SAS Driver number. Figure 2 EFI command Figure 3 EFI SAS Driver number This SAS driver number is 137. The number 137 could be different, depending on the result of the EFI SAS driver number checking. 4. Type “dh –d ” to find out SAS controller number Figure 4 EFI SAS controller number This SAS controller number is 136.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 5 EFI SAS controller information 6. And then you can type “drvcfg –s < SAS Controller number >” to start EFI RAID BIOS Console. Figure 6 Start EFI RAID BIOS Console The Controller Selection screen displays. 7. Select a controller and click Start to begin the configuration. Figure 7 EFI RAID BIOS Console 8. Select Configuration Wizard.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 8 RAID BIOS Console 9. Choose New Configuration and click Next. Figure 9 Configuration Wizard 10. Click Yes when the screen displays: “This is a Destructive Operation! Original configuration and data will be lost Select Yes, if desired so.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 10 Warning of data lost 11. Choose Manual Configuration and click Next. Figure 11 Configuration Metheod 12. Hold down the key and click each drive you want to include in the array or the Drive Groups. Click Add To Array. If you make a mistake and need to remove drives, click Reclaim. And then click Next. Figure 12 Drive Group Definition 13. Click Add to Span and then click Next.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 13 Span Definition 14. On the Virtual Drive Definition window, select RAID 5 from the first drop-down box. Change the size to 2.725 TB. Then click Next. NOTE: There is a prompt in green that shows the max size of each RAID Level. If needed, change the stripe size, the policies for Access, Read, Write, IO, and Disk Cache and decide whether to use background initialization. Figure 14 Virtual Drive Definition 15.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array 17. Click Yes to initialize the new drive. Figure 15 Virtual Drives 18. Click Home and then Click Exit to exit RAID BIOS Console. 19. Insert OS installation CD into CD-ROM. 20. Reboot into EFI shell. 21. Launch the installer under EFI. (\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI) NOTE: Here device fs0 is the OS installation CD. Figure 16 Boot from CD 22. Press any key to boot from CD. 2.2.2 Plan B: RAID Configuration by RAID BIOS Console 1.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 17 Boot Options 2. Reboot and press + to enter RAID BIOS Console when the screen displays: “Press to enter the RAID BIOS Console” Figure 18 Enter RAID BIOS Console 3. The Controller Selection screen displays. Select a controller and click Start to begin the configuration.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 19 Controller Selection 4. After that, follow the procedure of Plan A (start with step 7 and end with step 17) to finish RAID configuration. 5. Press F2 when system POST and enter system BIOS Switch to Boot Options tab, enable “EFI Optimized Boot” and “Use Legacy Video for EFI OS”. Figure 20 Boot Options 6. Insert OS installation CD into CD-ROM and reboot into EFI shell. 7. Launch the installer under EFI. (\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 21 Boot from CD 8. Press any key to boot from CD. 2.3 OS Installation 1. Click Next to confirm language, time, and so on. Figure 22 Confirm language, time, etc 2. Click Install Now.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 23 Install Now 3. Select standard installation and click Next. Figure 24 Selecting OS 4. Enable check-box to accept license and click Next.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 25 License 5. Select Custom installation. Figure 26 Select type of installation 6. Load Driver of Intel® Hardware RAID.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 27 Load Driver 7. Setup a new partition larger than 2 TB. Figure 28 Create Partition 8. Click Next to start installation.
Install an OS into GPT Disk on Intel® HWR Array Figure 29 Starting installation 9. Installation completes.
Look up the GPT Disk Properties 3. Look up the GPT Disk Properties You can go to Disk Management > Right click on Boot Volume > Property > Hardware tab > Double click on the disk > Volumes tab > Click Populate It displays GPT with capacity 28***** MB. (Reserved space = 200 MB) Figure 30 GPT Disk Properties NOTE: Disable “EFI Optimized Boot” and “Use Legacy Video for EFI OS” in BIOS configuration after installation will cause the OS fail to boot up.
Backup 4. Backup If you cannot install successfully with the above steps, you can try the following steps before RAID and BIOS configuration. These steps will change your entire BIOS configuration to the default configuration. 1. Press F2 when system POST to enter system BIOS 2. Press F9 or switch to Exit tab and select Load Default Values. 3. Click Yes when the screen displays: “Load Optimized Defaults?” Figure 31 Load Optimized Defaults 4. Press F10 to save and exit.
