Gecko/20110414 Thunderbird/3.1.10   
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   p.os.os2.misc:3324 comp.os.os2.beta:172 comp.os.os2.setup.storage:399   
   From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard    
      
    My take on the EFI stuff is that I was also certain for some time that    
   > EFI was going to be they standard to come. Thats certainly how Mac OS    
   > works. In server environments EFI (GPT disc layout) is certainly the    
   > way to go. I have so far not ran into systems with a GPT disc layout.   
   >   
   Plenty of other people have.  There's a whole body of WWW pages Out    
   There, that has been around for several years at this point, written by    
   people who do things like triple-boot Linux, MacOS, and Windows NT.     
   This MacTech article, for example, dates from 2006:   
      
        http://mactech.com./articles/mactech/Vol.22/22.11/TripleBoot/index.html   
      
   Things have come along a way in the years since.  There are now, for    
   example, a lot more utilities that enable hybrid MBR/EFI partitioning or    
   non-destructive conversion from MBR partitioning to EFI partitioning.     
   DASDPART, mentioned in my preceding post, is indeed one of them.   
      
           
   http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/conver   
   ing-mbr-to-efi-partitioning.html   
      
   The world actually *already is* going EFI, and has been for some years.     
   And now that hard discs in the home computer market are within a stone's    
   throw of the hard upper limit on the MBR partitioning scheme, that's    
   going to speed up some.  Moreover, I've been telling the world for some    
   time that there's a 2TiB limit on the    
   load-and-run-the-Volume-Boot-Record mechanism, caused not by the    
   partitioning scheme but by a 32-bit BPB field.  People are going to    
   start hitting that pretty soon, too.  Overcoming it involves an    
   operating system bootstrap mechanism that doesn't need to use the BIOS    
   Parameter Block to locate the boot volume, which in turn means an EFI    
   operating system boot loader or something like it.  So not only is there    
   growing pressure to switch to the EFI partition table scheme, but    
   there's growing pressure to switch to the EFI bootstrap mechanism, too.   
      
           
   http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/bios-p   
   rameter-block.html#V3.4   
      
   The only things that are mitigating the latter pressure are things like    
   Windows 7's "System Reserved" partition.  Expect "You must have a System    
   Reserved partition and it must reside below the 2TiB line." to become a    
   Frequently Given Answer within the next few years.  And expect a lot of    
   confusion from the "I used the EFI partition scheme, but I still seem to    
   have a 2TiB problem." folk.  The BPB limit isn't as widely known as the    
   MBR partition scheme limit, and changing the partition scheme is only    
   half the solution.   
      
      
   --- Internet Rex 2.31   
    * Origin: virginmedia.com (1:261/20.999)