MBR vs GPT: Which Is More Suitable for Your Hard Drive?

When you have to choose between Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT) for your new hard drives, you can refer to this article to select an ideal one for yourself.

When you want to initialize a new hard disk in the computer in Disk Manage, you might have to choose between two different disk styles called GUID Partition Table (GPT) and Master Boot Record (MBR). If you wonder that which one is better for you own, then you can compare them in following 5 aspects and choose an ideal one.

1.Popularity

Master Boot Record (MBR) is an old standard which shows up earlier than GPT to manage the partitions in the hard drives. Therefore, with the rapid development, it owns a great number of users that is much more than the GUID Partition Table (GPT).

2.Number of Partitions

For the Master Boot Record (MBR), you can only allow to create at most 4 primary partitions. If you want to create more partitions, then you have to choose one of the four partitions as an external partition. And after that, you can create other logical partitions in this external partition. But when it comes to GUID Partition Table (GPT), you can choose to create at most 128 primary partitions if you want.

3.Operating System Support

Since Master Boot Record (MBR) is developing longer than GUID Partition Table (GPT), it almost can be used in all types of operating system. On the contrary, as GPT is a new technology, part of Windows systems like Windows 8 or other latest Windows OS versions can support it only.

4.Hard Disk Capacities

In addition, they have different hard drive capacities. For Master Boot Record, it has up to 2TB storage space only. If the new drive is more than 2 GB, then you have to choose GUID Partition Table instead. GPT supports up to about 18EB in storage capacity.

5.Securities

Apart from above differences, they have difference in security as well. For GPT, at the beginning and the end of the hard drive, it has GUID partition table header there. And GPT also has CRC32 checksum in it. Thus GPT can recover basic errors that occur in the primary partition, which is better than the MBR.

Besides, when it comes to the hard drive security, we’d like to recommend that you’d better keep regular backups all the time, like keeping Outlook backups for corrupt Outlook.

Author Introduction:

Allissa Shen is a data recovery expert in DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including repair sql and word recovery software products. For more information visit www.datanumen.com