It’s a new standard that’s gradually replacing MBR. RELATED: What's the Difference Between FAT32, exFAT, and NTFS? GPT’s Advantages This is a silly little hack and shouldn’t be necessary. MBR also only supports up to four primary partitions-if you want more, you have to make one of your primary partitions an “extended partition” and create logical partitions inside it. For starters, MBR only works with disks up to 2 TB in size. If you have Linux installed, the GRUB boot loader will typically be located in the MBR. If you have Windows installed, the initial bits of the Windows boot loader reside here-that’s why you may have to repair your MBR if it’s overwritten and Windows won’t start. The boot loader is a small bit of code that generally loads the larger boot loader from another partition on a drive. This sector contains a boot loader for the installed operating system and information about the drive’s logical partitions. MBR was first introduced with IBM PC DOS 2.0 in 1983. It’s called Master Boot Record because the MBR is a special boot sector located at the beginning of a drive. RELATED: What Is the System Reserved Partition and Can You Delete It? MBR’s Limitations This is why you have to choose MBR or GPT before creating partitions on a drive. This information includes where partitions begin and end on the physical disk, so your operating system knows which sectors belong to each partition and which partition is bootable. MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT (GUID Partition Table) are two different ways of storing the partitioning information on a drive. You have to partition a disk drive before you can use it. If you’ve ever partitioned and formatted a disk-or set up a Mac to dual boot Windows-you’ve likely had to deal with MBR and GPT. GPT is the new standard and is gradually replacing MBR. Only choose MBR for compatibility if you need it.Ī partition structure defines how information is structured on the partition, where partitions begin and end, and also the code that is used during startup if a partition is bootable. GPT, or GUID Partition Table, is a newer standard with many advantages including support for larger drives and is required by most modern PCs. This isn’t a Windows-only standard, by the way-Mac OS X, Linux, and other operating systems can also use GPT. GPT brings with it many advantages, but MBR is still the most compatible and is still necessary in some cases. Today we’re explaining the difference between GPT and MBR and helping you choose the right one for your PC or Mac. Set up a new disk on Windows 10 or 8.1 and you’ll be asked whether you want to use MBR (Master Boot Record) or GPT (GUID Partition Table).

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