I'm going to get it out of the way that GPT is the standard when initializing drives, don't need to debate that. However, in theory wouldn't it be possible to expand the storage capacity of MBR drives by using Advanced Format or e512 drives? Standard hard drives have sector sizes of 512 bytes, and MBR works on a 32 bit addressing system so naturally, 2^32*512B gives you 2.199TB which is how we get to the 2TB storage cap on MBR. But consider those AF drives, which generally have 4096 Byte sectors. In theory we could get 2^32*4096B = 17.596TB in storage. There's no point in actually putting this into practice realistically but would it be possible? Currently those drives will emulate the 512B sector system by putting 8 512B virtual sectors on the 4096B physical sector allowing applications and OSs to function normally. Only problem is, you're still limited by the 2.199TB cap as discussed earlier. So this begs the questions, what would be involved in getting a system to run 4096B MBR? Or is it only possible on paper? Thoughts?
