GPT vs MBR partition styles

[chanuka3949]

Hi, i'm planning to buy a new HDD(this SATA 2 one is really slow in read speeds because of heavy usage), and my motherboard is Gigabyte B85m D3H. As it supports UEFI i'm thinking of installing Windows 10 with GPT partition scheme. What's the main difference between GPT and MBR. What are the performance differences between these two.

 

Would you recommend WD or Toshiba HDDs (1TB)

 

Thank you

[AlicePhoebe]

MBR is the old standard for managing the partition in the hard disk, and it is still being used extensively by many people. The MBR resides at the very beginning of the hard disk and it holds the information on how the logical partitions are organized in the storage device. In addition, the MBR also contains executable code that can scan the partitions for the active OS and load up the boot up code/procedure for the OS.

 

For a MBR disk, you can only have four primary partitions. To create more partitions, you can set the fourth partition as the extended partition and you will be able to create more sub-partitions (or logical drives) within it. As MBR uses 32-bit to record the partition, each partition can only go up to a maximum of 2TB in size. 

 

GPT is the latest standard for laying out the partitions of a hard disk. It makes use of globally unique identifiers (GUID) to define the partition and it is part of the UEFI standard. This means that on a UEFI-based system (which is required for Windows 8 Secure Boot feature), it is a must to use GPT. With GPT, you can create theoretically unlimited partitions on the hard disk, even though it is generally restricted to 128 partitions by most OSes. Unlike MBR that limits each partition to only 2TB in size, each partition in GPT can hold up to 2^64 blocks in length (as it is using 64-bit), which is equivalent to 9.44ZB for a 512-byte block (1 ZB is 1 billion terabytes). In Microsoft Windows, that size is limited to 256TB.

 

In most cases, you will be fine with either MBR or GPT. It is only in situation where you need to install Windows on a Mac, or when you need to have a partition bigger than 2TB, that you need to use GPT, or convert MBR to GPT. Also, for the newer model of computer that uses UEFI, it will only support GPT.

[Master Disaster]

MBR is the old standard for managing the partition in the hard disk, and it is still being used extensively by many people. The MBR resides at the very beginning of the hard disk and it holds the information on how the logical partitions are organized in the storage device. In addition, the MBR also contains executable code that can scan the partitions for the active OS and load up the boot up code/procedure for the OS.

 

For a MBR disk, you can only have four primary partitions. To create more partitions, you can set the fourth partition as the extended partition and you will be able to create more sub-partitions (or logical drives) within it. As MBR uses 32-bit to record the partition, each partition can only go up to a maximum of 2TB in size. 

 

GPT is the latest standard for laying out the partitions of a hard disk. It makes use of globally unique identifiers (GUID) to define the partition and it is part of the UEFI standard. This means that on a UEFI-based system (which is required for Windows 8 Secure Boot feature), it is a must to use GPT. With GPT, you can create theoretically unlimited partitions on the hard disk, even though it is generally restricted to 128 partitions by most OSes. Unlike MBR that limits each partition to only 2TB in size, each partition in GPT can hold up to 2^64 blocks in length (as it is using 64-bit), which is equivalent to 9.44ZB for a 512-byte block (1 ZB is 1 billion terabytes). In Microsoft Windows, that size is limited to 256TB.

 

In most cases, you will be fine with either MBR or GPT. It is only in situation where you need to install Windows on a Mac, or when you need to have a partition bigger than 2TB, that you need to use GPT, or convert MBR to GPT. Also, for the newer model of computer that uses UEFI, it will only support GPT.

Just to add to this perfect explanation, Windows will usually auto create the partition type required by the system. There's generally no need for user interaction.

[leafwarbler]

To summarize,

MBR: 2TB, 4 primarypartitions or 3 primary partitions and 1extend partition, BIOS;

GPT: 18EB, 128 partitions, UEFI;

 

Before converting MBR to GPT, you have to make sure the motherboard type. UEFI can support GPT and MBR, but BIOS just can support MBR.

 

You can use command prompt convert MBR to GPT or convert GPT to MBR, but it will clean the whole disk.

[deviant88]

always use gpt with windows 8 or 10 uefi install