IBM 88553RX, Installation Manual

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34
IBM
Eserver
xSeries 455 Planning and Installation Guide
Each bootable GPT disk must contain an EFI System Partition and it should be
the first partition on the disk, right after protective MBR, as shown in Figure 1-18.
Figure 1-18 Boot GPT disk structure
The EFI specification supports only FAT or FAT32 on the ESP partition. The ESP
is not visible to the operating system’s users by default, but can be accessed for
read/write operations from within the operating system by special commands.
For Windows-specific information, see “Accessing EFI System Partition from
Windows” on page 147. For Linux information, see “Partitions on IA-64 Linux” on
page 166.
Note that a non EFI disk partitioning tool would not understand Figure 1-18 and
will see it as Figure 1-17 on page 32.
1.10.3 EFI and the reduced-legacy concept
The EFI is
reduced-legacy
, which means that it eliminates certain hardware and
firmware elements of the original PC architecture while advancing the PC's
stability and usability. These I/O components have been part of the PC
architecture for a long time. In the x455, there is no support in EFI for a parallel
port, ISA slots, mouse and keyboard ports, or a diskette drive.
EFI replaces this support with the support for new technology such as bootstrap
loading from USB devices and the use of USB mouse and keyboard interfaces.
For more information about the EFI specification, see the following:
http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/index.htm
http://www.microsoft.com/hwdev/platform/firmware/EFI/default.asp
EFI
System
Partition
(ESP)
Data partition(s)
P
rotect
ive
MB
R
GU
ID
P
ar
tit
io
n
Ta
bl
e
Tip: A diskette drive can be used if the 64-bit operating system supports the
device, but the EFI does not support the use of a diskette drive. We
recommend that you use a USB memory key instead.