guid vs master boot record mac new hard drive

The boot loader holds a little piece of code which will load another larger loader from other partition on the drive. It is at the beginning of a hard drive, working as a special boot sector which includes a boot loader for the installed Windows and information recording logical partitions of the hard drive. MBR, short form of Master Boot Record, was initially introduced with PC DOS 2.0 operating system in 1983. There are two types of partition plans: MBR and GPT on Windows computer, and we'll talk about both in the following sections. However, if you haven't heard about the concept, it's able to help you understand partition table and its function directly. Actually, this picture can't present actual situation accurately, and some details are even not right. In the picture above, hard drive is divided into three partitions C, D and E, and partition table information is stored in disk's beginning part. Operating system gains partition information by way of accessing data in partition table. Partition table defines and stores partition information, locating certain disk space on the beginning area. How to create multiple partitions? This is when partition table come to use. One physical hard drive or SSD can be divided into several partitions (it is OK to have one partition only). Partition should be formatted to NTFS or FAT files system before storing data. Strictly speaking, partition can't store data if files system is not built. If you want to know more about these, please continue reading.Ĭomputer contains at least one hard drive or SSD for data storage, but the physical drive can't store data directly before partitions are created. BIOS does not support GPT-partitioned volumes. If the motherboard uses legacy BIOS system, you should choose MBR. If the motherboard on your computer supports UEFI (Unified Extensile Firmware), you can choose GPT.ģ. If the capacity of your hard drive exceeds 2TB, you should choose GUID partition table (GPT) partitioning scheme, so that you can make use of all storage space.Ģ. If you just want to know how to choose between MBR and GPT instead of learning technical details, then follow advice below:ġ. This part sums up several rules that can help you decide which to choose.

When installing operating system, you might be asked whether you want to use MBR or GPT partition table format. How to partition a hard drive to GPT in Windows 10/8/7?.Convert disk between MBR and GPT without data loss.How to check if your hard drive is MBR or GPT?.MBR VS GPT, which one is better for you?.

Two types of partition plans - MBR & GPT.

Guid vs master boot record mac new hard drive