MBR & GPT

GPT brings with it many advantages, but MBR is still the most compatible and is still
necessary in some cases

You have to partition a disk drive before you can use it. MBR (Master Boot Record) and GPT
(GUID Partition Table) are two different ways of storing the partitioning information 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. This is why you have to choose MBR or GPT before creating partitions on a drive.

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.
This sector contains a boot loader for the installed operating system and information about
the drive’s logical partitions. The boot loader is a small bit of code that generally loads the
larger boot loader from another partition on a drive. 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. If you have Linux installed, the GRUB boot loader
will typically be located in the MBR.

MBR does have its limitations. For starters, MBR only works with disks up to 2 TB in size.
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.
This is a silly little hack and shouldn’t be necessary.

GPT stands for GUID Partition Table. It’s a new standard that’s gradually replacing MBR. It’s
associated with UEFI, which replaces the clunky old BIOS with something more modern.
GPT, in turn, replaces the clunky old MBR partitioning system with something more modern.
It’s called GUID Partition Table because every partition on your drive has a “globally unique
identifier,” or GUID—a random string so long that every GPT partition on earth likely has its
own unique identifier.

GPT doesn’t suffer from MBR’s limits. GPT-based drives can be much larger, with size limits
dependent on the operating system and its file systems. GPT also allows for a nearly
unlimited number of partitions. Again, the limit here will be your operating system—Windows
allows up to 128 partitions on a GPT drive, and you don’t have to create an extended
partition to make them work.

On an MBR disk, the partitioning and boot data is stored in one place. If this data is
overwritten or corrupted, you’re in trouble. In contrast, GPT stores multiple copies of this
data across the disk, so it’s much more robust and can recover if the data is corrupted.
GPT also stores cyclic redundancy check (CRC) values to check that its data is intact. If the
data is corrupted, GPT can notice the problem and attempt to recover the damaged data
from another location on the disk. MBR had no way of knowing if its data was
corrupted—you’d only see there was a problem when the boot process failed or your drive’s
partitions vanished.

GPT drives tend to include a “protective MBR.” This type of MBR says that the GPT drive
has a single partition that extends across the entire drive. If you try to manage a GPT disk
with an old tool that can only read MBRs, it will see a single partition that extends across the
entire drive. This protective MBR ensures the old tools won’t mistake the GPT drive for an
unpartitioned drive and overwrite its GPT data with a new MBR. In other words, the
protective MBR protects the GPT data from being overwritten.

You’ll probably want to use GPT when setting up a drive. It’s a more modern, robust
standard that all computers are moving toward. If you need compatibility with old systems —
for example, the ability to boot Windows off a drive on a computer with a traditional BIOS —
you’ll have to stick with MBR for now.