Position : Tips - MBR or GPT - Master partition table step by Part 2

MBR or GPT - Master partition table step by Part 2


Maybe you heard about MBR and GPT and you are right, on the Microsoft Windows platform there are two kinds of partition table formats, i.e. MBR (master boot record) and GPT (GUID partition table).

Now MBR is the most widely used partition table format, and yet the percent of using GPT is gradually increasing. In the series of articles about partition table, I'll discuss MBR first and GPT later.

Difference Between MBR and GPT


1. MBR has existed for a long time, while GPT appeared only a few years ago;
2. MBR is the most widely used partition table format, and yet the percent of using GPT is increasing little by little;
3. MBR supports three kinds of partitions, i.e. primary partition, extended partition and logical partition, which don't exist in GPT.
4. In most cases, MBR can't manage the storage that exceeds 2 TB, but GPT can manage the storage of any size.
5. Only Windows Vista/7/8 can use GPT, but MBR can be used by any Windows systems.

Next article will be devoted to introducing MBR first and GPT will be discussed later.

Get hard disk's partition table type by using DiskGenius


1. Start DiskGenius and on the Partition and Folder Tree of the main interface select the hard disk.

mbr or gpt



2. You can see the partition table type of the hard disk on the right part of the main interface.

mbr or gpt