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The MBR, short for Master Boot Record, is an old and commonly-used disk layout. The GPT, short for Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table, is a new disk layout associated with UEFI. Firstly, you may know something about MBR like how to fix MBR, which leads you to think MBR just refer to a specific important data. Actually, MBR and GPT also determine the style of the disk between MBR and GPT. After initializing it, we can call a disk as MBR disk or GPT disk. The two different styles of disk own different schemes to manage the partitions on a disk. The differences between them are caused by the rapid development of the information age. The older scheme shows more and more disadvantages, so there introduced a new scheme to fit the changes. Once a hard disk is initialized, the structured information will be recorded and stored to a particular segment of the disk. On the other hand, the information will change with the changes of partition information so that it is called partitioning scheme.
Be careful when creating a 5th partition on a MBR disk. If you want to create more partitions, you have to create a structure of no more than 3 primary partitions plus an extended partition and then create more logical partitions resides on the extended partition. Otherwise, the disk will be converted to dynamic disk. It is not recommended to average users as some users may encounter dynamic disk invalid problems and unable to install OS on a dynamic disk.
To sum up, you may see that GUID partition scheme has more advantages, is that mean you can adopt this kind of partitioning scheme to every disk? No, not all Windows systems support this partitioning scheme.
Windows XP 32-bit, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4, or Windows 95/98 cannot read, write, and boot from GPT disks, they will see only the Protective MBR.
Windows XP x64 Edition can use GPT disks for data only.
All versions of Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 Server, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2012 can use GPT disk partition for data. Booting is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems.
When you are facing those conditions, you can mix GPT and MBR disks on systems that support GPT. However, systems that support UEFI require that boot partition must reside on a GPT disk. Other hard disks can be either MBR or GPT. Besides, both MBR and GPT disks can be basic or dynamic disk.
The major differences between MBR and GPT disk are mentioned above. So you can choose GPT or MBR depending on what you have and what you need to do.
►What’s the Difference Between GPT and MBR When Partitioning a Drive? : http://adf.ly/1hJnb1
►The Differences Between MBR and GPT : http://adf.ly/1hJnha