Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R


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Other than HPA, the only potential issue is that P45 boards don't have onboard video, IIRC. That means you have to give up a slot to a video card. Not a deal breaker, especially if you already have the board on hand.

 

Thanks for the replies. I have read the WIKI on HPA issue. I don't see "Express BIOS Rescue" anywhere in the bios setup or the POST screen neither do I see "Save bios to HDD" under Advanced Bios Features in the bios setup, does it mean there is no HPA on this board?

 

Moreover, this board has two separate SATA controllers: Intel ICH10R (6 ports) and Gigabyte SATA2 (2 ports). They support RAID but of course I am going to set them to AHCI mode because I won't need the RAID function. Question is whether all 8 ports (including those 2 from Gigabyte) can be used on UNRAID? That will be cool to have 8 usuable unraid SATA ports on board.

 

Regarding the video card, would it be wise to permanently attach a card to this mobo just in case? (May be I can dig some cheap PCI video card). Would any video card work on unraid?

 

Thanks a lot for the heads up guys. Appreciate your dedicated responses.

 

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I glanced over the online manual and I see no mention of HPA so I believe you are okay.  This board seems to still utilize the dual bios chip setup.    A dedicated video card will work out fine and I don't think unRAID cares what it is.  You only need it to do the initial setup of your bios and perhaps watch it boot once.    Like I mentioned above you could most likely yank out the video card afterwards to save power useage.

 

Kryspy

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Kryspy, not sure what online manual you were looking at but I did find mention of it in the online manual for rev 1.1 of this board on the Gigabyte site (I suspect that MB rev 1.0 is the same).  In the Advanced BIOS Features section of the manual (pg. 51) it says the following ...

 

Dual BIOS Recovery Source

If the main BIOS is corrupted, selects whether to recover the BIOS from the backup BIOS or from the HPA in the hard drive. (Default: HPA)

 

Now I have three different Gigabyte MBs (all AMD) and they are all the same WRT HPA but different than this one.  I pulled this from the Advanced BIOS Features section in the manual for my GA-MA785GM-UD2H MB (but all three manuals are basically identical) which I have used successfully for unRAID with no HPA issues (in fact all three MBs are good for unRAID)  ...

 

Backup BIOS Image to HDD

Allows the system to copy the BIOS image file to the hard drive. If the system BIOS is corrupted, it will be recovered from this image file. (Default: Disabled)

 

My read on the board that you have is that unless there is a new BIOS version out there I would BE VERY CAREFUL.  I don't have a board like yours but it looks like you cannot disable HPA you can only determine where to pull the backup from - the backup BIOS or the HDD.  Even if you select the backup BIOS option I suspect that it would still write a BIOS image to the HDD - translation you've got HPA and you're screwed.  And even if in selecting this option it did not write a BIOS image to the HDD you'd have to watch out for a dead CMOS battery because after you put in a new battery then the HPA would be back by default.  My suggestion would be to not use this board unless you can confirm through another user that HPA is not an issue because it looks like it is to me.

 

Also WRT the video card.  Some MBs will not run headless.  So yes you'll need to have a card to get up and running but if you remove the card after the initial setup the MB may not boot without a video device installed.  If you want to know if the MB will run headless then you'll need this confirmed by another user or send an e-mail to Gigabyte and ask them.  Not being able to run headless would not be a deal breaker for me.  HPA on the other hand would be.

 

 

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