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MBR vs GPT

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E^vol

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
335
I know this has probably been explained before, and I did search it, but can I just quickly get a confirmation as to which I should use?


1: 4 year old rig (now htpc) core2duo w/ ssd for OS/prog, 1.5tb hdd, 2tb hdd, 2x 500gb hdds ---> BIOS

2: Brand new i7 rig w/ ssd for OS/Prog/games, 1tb hdd for downloads, etc... ---> UEFI


Now, from what I have read online, I should be using MBR on machines running BIOS and GPT on machines running UEFI.

Is this correct or not? None of my hdds are over 2tb. Both machines are running Win7 64bit.
 
if you want to install windows xp, you need mbr

if you want to boot from grub .97, you need mbr

if you want a disk to have more than 2tb, you need gpt on that disk

if you want to boot a gpt disk, you need uefi and windows 7

that's all there is to it

so you would be correct
 
Thanks!
What about the hdds which are just there for file storage, not boot drives? Can a storage drive use GPT on a BIOS machine? Or is that not recommended?
 
I wouldn't use GPT unless forced to (>2TB drives). There is only drawbacks, currently.
 
Aesma said:
I wouldn't use GPT unless forced to (>2TB drives). There is only drawbacks, currently.
Click to expand...

not meaning to grumble, but it isn't real helpful to folks to just throw out a statement like that with no details :(
 
I also had a hell of a time working with a hard drive that I set it up as a GPT drive and I can't remember if it was fdisk or the linux partition tool but one of them could not see the GPT information and I could not partition the drive, had to use whichever other tool that could read the drive and recreate it as an MBR
 
I'm just curious, why would you want to use GTP?

It'll probably become a PITA :)D) if you ever need to swap a few drives with most normal MBR users?

I've only started playing with it for 3TB storage drives but I can see where it would start being confusing if you're like me with 2 different computers and sometimes swap drives.

I'm with Aesma and wouldn't do it for anything but >3TB storage drives.

Just curious, that's all.
 
On my new rig, I have a 240gb ssd and a 1tb hdd. UEFI and Win7.
I don't have to use GPT right?
Which should I use? Would I see any benefit with one or the other?
 
For a 240 GB SSD you should stay with MBR. GPT mainly helps in the case where in the future you expect to need > 2TB or you want to have a lot of partitions.
 
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