MBR (Master Boot Record) VS GPT (GUID Partition Table)

MBR (Master Boot Record) vs GPT (GUID Partition Table)

What You need to know.

When creating a bootable flash disk or initializing a disk for the first time in Windows, you might be asked to choose between MBR or GPT. Many users get confused at this stage and don’t know which to choose. In this article, you will understand what the MBR and GPT is.

The MBR – This is an old partitioning technology of hard drive. Though it has some limitations for modern usage which makes GPT better off. But almost all the available operating system supports MBR and MBR hard drives can be used on almost all computers.

The GPT – This is a modern partitioning technology. Newer versions of Windows use GPT by default such as Windows 8, 8.1 and 10. Windows such as Windows 7 can’t boot using GPT drives.

Difference between MBR and GPT

MBR	GPT
Introduced by IBM for DOS PC in 1980	Introduced by LINUX
It is an old partition table system	It is a new partition table system
It can only handle hard drives that are 2TB or less	It can handle hard drives that are less than or more than 2TB
It supports 4 partitions	It supports 128 partitions
There is no way to know about data corruption	Problem can be noticed and able to attempt its recovery
Data cannot be easily recovered	Data can be easily recovered

In summary, there might be some reasons to stay with MBR such as hard drive storage capacity but with GPT, you have faster speeds, unlimited partition, significantly larger storage capacities, resilience etc.

Note: If a computer uses UEFI, it will only support GPT. So when you upgrade such computer, it may be necessary to convert to MBR to GPT at first. And if it uses legacy as most computer does, it can use either MBR or GPT pending if the Windows to be installed is UEFI based or not. Click Here to learn how to convert MBR to GPT

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