Why does UEFI not support NTFS?

Discussion in 'Windows 8' started by dumble, Mar 26, 2015.

  1. dumble

    dumble MDL Member

    Jan 17, 2009
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    Isn't UEFI supposed to be the more advance version of BIOS.. I wonder why they left out the support for reading from NTFS. :g:? Anyone now the reaseon why?
     
  2. Yen

    Yen Admin (retired)
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    May 6, 2007
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    NTFS is M$'es own filesystem (proprietary FS). I guess one (BIOS/UEFI manufacturer) would need to pay for the license to them in order to provide NTFS officially....FAT is free.
     
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  3. Tito

    Tito Admin / Adviser
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    Nov 30, 2009
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  4. EFA11

    EFA11 Avatar Guru

    Oct 7, 2010
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    YAY For Fat Free diets :D
     
  5. John Sutherland

    John Sutherland MDL Addicted

    Oct 15, 2014
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    Hello dumble - You're referring to the fact that the EFI system partition must be formatted FAT32 and not NTFS, correct? It's a part of the EFI specification and I believe it's because FAT32 is common to Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX. All three natively support reading FAT32 formatted devices. If it were NTFS, you'd be locking out the others from being able to boot on your machine. Microsoft might like it that way, but I doubt that the rest of the world would.
     
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  6. Yen

    Yen Admin (retired)
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    Neither BIOS nor UEFI can boot a NTFS partition directly.
    BIOS 'boots' MBR, UEFI boots from GPT (ESP). When using an NTFS formatted USB pen drive one cannot make an GPT install from it directly. The ESP must be FAT32.
    At an MBR install the system partition must be NTFS at windows, though.

    There are 2 things to consider. The specifications as mentioned above.
    And licensing as mentioned by me.
    When using the NTFS one has to pay for the licenses. This applies to many more 'standards' like GPS, GSM, codecs like dolby, DTS and many more.
    This means when you buy a device which has GPS you actually pay to the owner, here the US army....

    UEFI has no native NTFS support also Android hasn't. NTFS is M$'es own and actually poor FS.
     
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