Which is Preferred? Legacy BIOS or UEFI

[Macaroni323]

OK... My last server was legacy BIOS and 8GB of RAM limited so I've had to remain using FreeNAS v11.3 U5. I rebuilt the old system with an SSD boot late last year so the SSD is legacy BIOS boot. Now 2022 and I've rebuild my hardware with a new motherboard/CPU and 32GB of RAM (welcome to 2022 from 2005 vintage stuff). Of course the transfer of FreeNAS was unbelievably easy (special thanks to danb35). Backed up old server data and configs shut down old server no pool export or anything. Built the new one and burned it in with no drives just diagnostic programs on USB and shut down after declaring victory. Finally install the SSD boot and 4 WD Red 4TB data drives and then, upon boot, setting legacy BIOS on the new board and pointing it to the SSD boot and "poof" it all came back perfectly (had to reserve the new server's MAC in my router to get the old IP back).

Now my question... Should I, or can I convert the new system to UEFI boot or would I need to export the pool and just reinstall FreeNAS (or more appropriately TrueNAS) back to my SSD boot drive. Are there benefits for using UEFI boot over legacy (other than legacy BIOS may not work on TrueNAS)?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

EFI is in any conceivable way superior to legacy boot. A NAS will probably not have much opportunity to boot more than one OS, but with vendors finally embracing EFI you can for example copy that BIOS or HBA flash utility to your EFI partition and then reboot, invoke it from the standard EFI shell - instead of messing with DOS thumbdrives and the like.

That feature alone is worth using EFI boot wherever possible, IMHO.

 

[Macaroni323]

Thanks for the input Patrick. I really don't totally understand configuration of UEFI machines yet. My current system was built on a legacy macine but it's moved to a new machine that can boot both UEFI and legacy. I'd assume nothing has been converted to UEFI and so it's booting legacy still. Is there a way to convert the current boot drive to UEFI or would I be better off exporting the pool and reinstalling FreeNAS 11.3 U5 in UEFI boot? I'm holding off on v12.0 since I can't find familiar looking documentation on operating procedures on the new version (or maybe a PDF version) and I'm also cleaning up a bit of "fallout" after moving the v11.3 U5 system to a new machine.

 

[pschatz100]

I'm in a similar situation. If the system is running OK, there is no reason to change. However, if you were to reinstall the OS for some reason then you might want to build the new boot drive using UEFI.

 

[dan11394]

EFI is in any conceivable way superior to legacy boot. A NAS will probably not have much opportunity to boot more than one OS, but with vendors finally embracing EFI you can for example copy that BIOS or HBA flash utility to your EFI partition and then reboot, invoke it from the standard EFI shell - instead of messing with DOS thumbdrives and the like.

That feature alone is worth using EFI boot wherever possible, IMHO.

Hey Patrick,

Relatively new to messing with efi partitions. Do you have a link you can share that may either explain in further detail, or perhaps even guide me through it.

Thanks in advance

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

What exactly do you intend to do? It's just a FAT32 partition, no special tools needed.

 

[dan11394]

It could be that I’m misunderstanding the thread, but I’m running into bootx64.efi not found.

I’ve followed installation instructions for Core to the letter with several attempts. I’ve tried version 12 and 13, but nothing older than that.

Again - very new to boot partitions, but my understanding is that my install is missing bootx64.efi. I stumbled into this thread thinking that either building a bootx64 or finding one to copy might be my fix. So that’s what I’m trying to accomplish here.

For some context, I’ve been able to boot when installing to a usb, but I’m looking to boot from ssd. Looking at installing rEFInd to the system and hoping that handles my issue next.