Discs mbr or gpt, differences between the two standards of today

Differences between MBR and GPT

When we are going to install an operating system or install a new hard disk in our PC we will almost certainly be asked if we want to use the MBR or GPT partition structures. To understand its differences we must first be clear that it is a partition structure.

The partition structure is in charge of defining how the information is organized on the hard drive, to make it simple we can say that it is the way to classify the information. From this we can already deduce that it is something quite important.

MBR (Master Boot Record) is the oldest and most compatible partition standard, as it can be used in Windows, MacOS, Linux and the rest of the operating systems or almost all of them. MBR contains a bootloader for the operating system as well as information about the different partitions on the hard drive. The most important limitation of MBR is that it only supports hard drives of up to 2 TB and only supports up to four primary partitions, if we want more partitions we have to take one of the first ones and divide it into several logics.

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Faced with these limitations, the new GPT standard has emerged, it is much more modern and has come to replace the MBR. GPT is associated with UEFI so that in the computers that are used we will find this firmware and not BIOS, which is also deprecated. The full name of this standard is GUID Partition Table, this is because it includes a unique identifier for each partition. GPT eliminates the main limitations of MBR, since it allows up to 128 partitions on a single disk and is compatible with huge size hard drives, in this sense we will not fall short in the medium term.

A drawback of GPT is that the partition and boot data are stored in a single space so if it is corrupted you will have serious problems, to fix it, multiple copies of this data are created, so that if it is corrupted, it is possible to recover the lost data Its creators have thought of everything!

The most important limitation of GPT is that it can only be used on computers with UEFI firmware and with Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista and Server 64-bit operating systems, GNU / Linux distributions are already adapting, although many are not yet compatible. This means that if your computer has a BIOS firmware it will be impossible for you to use GPT and you will have to comply with the MBR, the same thing happens if you use an unsupported operating system.

Final words and conclusion about MBR and GPT disks

Therefore we can conclude that GPT is better than MBR although not all users will be able to use it, if your team allows it, do not hesitate and use GPT, otherwise MBR is still a good option.

Here ends our post on the differences between MBR and GPT disks, remember to share it on social networks so that it can help more users.