UEFI (Linux Box) Compatible DVD-RW Drives?

[Etheiy]

Good afternoon people!
I've been a lurker on Tom's Hardware for years (THE definitive source of info imo, thank you for existing) but this is my first post, as I actually cannot seem to grok - and therefore solve - the issue I'm facing.

I rebuilt my PC over the winter with half of my inheritance, re-using many of the peripherals but popping in a new mobo, CPU, case, silent fans, and graphics. It's basically intdended as a sort of hybrid HTPC workstation.. But it's not finished or set up and tested because..

The new BIOS is UEFI. And it doesn't detect my DVD drive. So I can't install a new shiny version of Linux (I want to try Mint with Cinnamon) and have to keep using my existing Lubuntu installation.

I've tried a few different things to get it to detect; juggling SATA ports, legacy mode, and nothing works.

Are there specific UEFI friendly DVD RW drives? Or do I just need to try everything again in the hopes I just fucked it up the first three times ?

(ETA: I will post system specs when I get home as I don't remember them offhand and am at work.)

 

[Pinhedd]

Good afternoon people!
I've been a lurker on Tom's Hardware for years (THE definitive source of info imo, thank you for existing) but this is my first post, as I actually cannot seem to grok - and therefore solve - the issue I'm facing.

I rebuilt my PC over the winter with half of my inheritance, re-using many of the peripherals but popping in a new mobo, CPU, case, silent fans, and graphics. It's basically intdended as a sort of hybrid HTPC workstation.. But it's not finished or set up and tested because..

The new BIOS is UEFI. And it doesn't detect my DVD drive. So I can't install a new shiny version of Linux (I want to try Mint with Cinnamon) and have to keep using my existing Lubuntu installation.

I've tried a few different things to get it to detect; juggling SATA ports, legacy mode, and nothing works.

Are there specific UEFI friendly DVD RW drives? Or do I just need to try everything again in the hopes I just fucked it up the first three times ?

(ETA: I will post system specs when I get home as I don't remember them offhand and am at work.)

I find it extremely unlikely that your firmware doesn't like your DVD drive. DVD drives are just ATAPI devices and haven't changed in... forever. So unless your DVD drive is absolutely ancient (at which point it should be replaced), there's no reason why it won't work.

UEFI works a little bit differently than BIOS.

BIOS works like so: It scans for bootable devices, enumerates them into a boot order, and then scans the first logical address of each device in order until it finds a master boot record and then passes execution to the master boot record that it found. If it fails to find one on the devices in the boot order it will present the infamous "boot device not found. Please insert system disk" yadda yadda.

UEFI works like so: it scans all devices, looks for either MBR,GPT, or El Torito partitioning schemes, scans the partitions on the devices for ones flagged as "EFI System Partition" and then presents those as boot options. UEFI works on the basis of bootable partitions, not bootable devices.

Fortunately, most motherboard vendors incorporate the legacy BIOS boot chain into modern UEFI firmware. This allows for both methods to be used. In order to use this method, legacy boot must be enabled, often along side UEFI boot. Furthermore, if your optical drive is attached to a storage controller other than the chipset, that storage controller's ROM must be run first, and some modern motherboards ship with both a BIOS and UEFI ROM for the onboard storage controllers. It's quite confusing. The simplest way is to make sure that the optical drive is attached to the chipset SATA ports, not any add-in ports from ASMedia, Marvell, etc... as these often don't speak ATAPI properly.

 

[Etheiy]

I find it extremely unlikely that your firmware doesn't like your DVD drive. DVD drives are just ATAPI devices and haven't changed in... forever. So unless your DVD drive is absolutely ancient (at which point it should be replaced), there's no reason why it won't work.

UEFI works a little bit differently than BIOS.

BIOS works like so: It scans for bootable devices, enumerates them into a boot order, and then scans the first logical address of each device in order until it finds a master boot record and then passes execution to the master boot record that it found. If it fails to find one on the devices in the boot order it will present the infamous "boot device not found. Please insert system disk" yadda yadda.

UEFI works like so: it scans all devices, looks for either MBR,GPT, or El Torito partitioning schemes, scans the partitions on the devices for ones flagged as "EFI System Partition" and then presents those as boot options. UEFI works on the basis of bootable partitions, not bootable devices.

Fortunately, most motherboard vendors incorporate the legacy BIOS boot chain into modern UEFI firmware. This allows for both methods to be used. In order to use this method, legacy boot must be enabled, often along side UEFI boot. Furthermore, if your optical drive is attached to a storage controller other than the chipset, that storage controller's ROM must be run first, and some modern motherboards ship with both a BIOS and UEFI ROM for the onboard storage controllers. It's quite confusing. The simplest way is to make sure that the optical drive is attached to the chipset SATA ports, not any add-in ports from ASMedia, Marvell, etc... as these often don't speak ATAPI properly.

I am using the motherboard SATA ports directly. It has six, and two seem to be the "main" ports.

When I first put the thing together I had the HDD in the first port and the DVD-RW drive (which iirc is a lightscribe one, Samsung probably as I like their products usually, and isn't that old for a barely-used DVD drive at all, maybe six or seven years) in the second.

I've tried switching the SATA ports over, I've tried different cables (just in case), and I've tried legacy mode both having switched the ports over and with them in the (logical to me) initial position.

I should also mention the DVD drive works once the system has booted, so it ain't dead yet.

 

[Pinhedd]

I find it extremely unlikely that your firmware doesn't like your DVD drive. DVD drives are just ATAPI devices and haven't changed in... forever. So unless your DVD drive is absolutely ancient (at which point it should be replaced), there's no reason why it won't work.

UEFI works a little bit differently than BIOS.

BIOS works like so: It scans for bootable devices, enumerates them into a boot order, and then scans the first logical address of each device in order until it finds a master boot record and then passes execution to the master boot record that it found. If it fails to find one on the devices in the boot order it will present the infamous "boot device not found. Please insert system disk" yadda yadda.

UEFI works like so: it scans all devices, looks for either MBR,GPT, or El Torito partitioning schemes, scans the partitions on the devices for ones flagged as "EFI System Partition" and then presents those as boot options. UEFI works on the basis of bootable partitions, not bootable devices.

Fortunately, most motherboard vendors incorporate the legacy BIOS boot chain into modern UEFI firmware. This allows for both methods to be used. In order to use this method, legacy boot must be enabled, often along side UEFI boot. Furthermore, if your optical drive is attached to a storage controller other than the chipset, that storage controller's ROM must be run first, and some modern motherboards ship with both a BIOS and UEFI ROM for the onboard storage controllers. It's quite confusing. The simplest way is to make sure that the optical drive is attached to the chipset SATA ports, not any add-in ports from ASMedia, Marvell, etc... as these often don't speak ATAPI properly.

I am using the motherboard SATA ports directly. It has six, and two seem to be the "main" ports.

When I first put the thing together I had the HDD in the first port and the DVD-RW drive (which iirc is a lightscribe one, Samsung probably as I like their products usually, and isn't that old for a barely-used DVD drive at all, maybe six or seven years) in the second.

I've tried switching the SATA ports over, I've tried different cables (just in case), and I've tried legacy mode both having switched the ports over and with them in the (logical to me) initial position.

I should also mention the DVD drive works once the system has booted, so it ain't dead yet.

Which motherboard is it?

6 or 7 years is old, but not that old.

 

[Etheiy]

Which motherboard is it?

6 or 7 years is old, but not that old.

I totally got distracted by dinner last night and forgot to post my system specs, stupid me.
Sorry, I feel like a prat now.

My new components are;
Asus F2A55-M LE Socket FM2 mATX Motherboard
AMD A8 5600K Black Edition 3.6GHz FM2 4MB L2 Cache
4GB G-Skill DDR3 1600Mhz Ripjaws
1 off Radeon HD6670 2GB DDR3

The DVD drive is an LG GSA-H55LI 20x Internal Super Multi DVD-RW that I bought in 2008 !
The wireless card is super old too, but I plan to replace that..

(Also for clarity, the ports I think of as the "main" ones are SATA_1 and _2 but I have tried other combinations.)

 

[Pinhedd]

Do you have a different DVD drive that you can try? Alternatively you can easily install it from a USB stick

I'm pretty sure that it's not the DVD drive (unless it's completely broken), but it may just be easier to work around it.

 

[Etheiy]

No, I don't. I could borrow a USB one from work, maybe.

You know, I don't think I've ever really even read HOW to do it from USB but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

It's not so much that I think my DVD drive is at fault, more that I don't understand why it doesn't work (I must be doing SOMETHING wrong in there) and I really hate not knowing why a thing I did doesn't work. I'm a mechanical engineer so, I usually have no trouble seeing issues, but electronics are still a slight mystery, even growing up in a custom PC building household!

Thanks for the explanation of how UEFI works contrasted against BIOS, though, that's really interesting. ^___^
(I love human-parsed information.)

And thanks for your patience with me.
I'll let you know if USB boot sorts me out.

 

[Pinhedd]

No, I don't. I could borrow a USB one from work, maybe.

You know, I don't think I've ever really even read HOW to do it from USB but I'm sure I'll figure it out.

It's not so much that I think my DVD drive is at fault, more that I don't understand why it doesn't work (I must be doing SOMETHING wrong in there) and I really hate not knowing why a thing I did doesn't work. I'm a mechanical engineer so, I usually have no trouble seeing issues, but electronics are still a slight mystery, even growing up in a custom PC building household!

Thanks for the explanation of how UEFI works contrasted against BIOS, though, that's really interesting. ^___^
(I love human-parsed information.)

And thanks for your patience with me.
I'll let you know if USB boot sorts me out.

Computer engineer here, I know your pain bud.

As for the USB thing, if you have access to a Windows PC you can use Rufus (http://rufus.akeo.ie/) to create it. It's the only one that I know of that properly handles the GPT partitioning scheme.

 

[Etheiy]

I have finally managed to obtain a USB stick and get Mint w/Cinnamon on to it.

(Turns out someone had - I don't know how, or why - filled the tray I keep ALL my USB keys in with curry sauce. Horrible, sweet, fruity curry sauce! Not even REAL curry sauce! Understandably, I can't use them like that..)

I should get to test it tonight.

I've selected GPT for UEFI, I think this is correct?

 

[Pinhedd]

I have finally managed to obtain a USB stick and get Mint w/Cinnamon on to it.

(Turns out someone had - I don't know how, or why - filled the tray I keep ALL my USB keys in with curry sauce. Horrible, sweet, fruity curry sauce! Not even REAL curry sauce! Understandably, I can't use them like that..)

I should get to test it tonight.

I've selected GPT for UEFI, I think this is correct?

That is correct!

 

[Etheiy]

Installing from USB worked perfectly, although my system wasn't even reading USBs at first so I had to "burn" the image here at work with that handy little program you linked me to, Pinhedd.

I now have a computer that actually works with all its hardware! Except the DVD drive. Which I realised the other day is probably fine, but as it's an IDE one with an adaptor to make it connect via SATA.. It may just be that the adaptor's borked.

Still! Many thanks!
(Also Mint 16 with Cinnamon is swishswish if anyone's interested..)

 

[Pinhedd]

Installing from USB worked perfectly, although my system wasn't even reading USBs at first so I had to "burn" the image here at work with that handy little program you linked me to, Pinhedd.

I now have a computer that actually works with all its hardware! Except the DVD drive. Which I realised the other day is probably fine, but as it's an IDE one with an adaptor to make it connect via SATA.. It may just be that the adaptor's borked.

Still! Many thanks!
(Also Mint 16 with Cinnamon is swishswish if anyone's interested..)

Ah yes, those SATA to PATA adapters are junk and should only be used with hard disks.

 

[cl0h]

BIOS works like so: It scans for bootable devices, enumerates them into a boot order, and then scans the first logical address of each device in order until it finds a master boot record and then passes execution to the master boot record that it found. If it fails to find one on the devices in the boot order it will present the infamous "boot device not found. Please insert system disk" yadda yadda.

UEFI works like so: it scans all devices, looks for either MBR,GPT, or El Torito partitioning schemes, scans the partitions on the devices for ones flagged as "EFI System Partition" and then presents those as boot options. UEFI works on the basis of bootable partitions, not bootable devices.

Fortunately, most motherboard vendors incorporate the legacy BIOS boot chain into modern UEFI firmware. This allows for both methods to be used. In order to use this method, legacy boot must be enabled, often along side UEFI boot. Furthermore, if your optical drive is attached to a storage controller other than the chipset, that storage controller's ROM must be run first, and some modern motherboards ship with both a BIOS and UEFI ROM for the onboard storage controllers. It's quite confusing. The simplest way is to make sure that the optical drive is attached to the chipset SATA ports, not any add-in ports from ASMedia, Marvell, etc... as these often don't speak ATAPI properly.

Thank you for explaining this so concisely.