Differences between MBR and GPT
Basically, MBR and GPT are two styles of disk partitions, where a disk partition is the name given to each partition present on a single physical data storage unit such as a hard drive. Thus, when making a disk partition, you can choose between MBR and GPT, both of which are two different ways of creating and managing the partition tables of a hard disk and that offer different functionalities, which will be described in this article for readers’ consideration.
📌What is MBR?
This format is used for several functions, among which we can mention the booting of the operating system with bootstrap, to store a partition table and sometimes to identify an individual disk device. It is worth noting that the MBR of a hard drive contains the information about the partitions on that drive.
Despite this, the MBR format has some limitations, among which stand out that it is only capable of handling disks of up to 2TB and supports only 4 primary partitions, so if more than 4 partitions are required, partitions must be used. extended.
📌What is GPT?
Also, the GPT system uses Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) to address partitions, and contains a protective MBR to address older computers in terms of partition handling.
However, despite the fact that the GPT format is newer, it has some disadvantages, among which we can mention that it only works on 64-bit operating systems but is compensated by its ability to handle disks of up to 256 TB and that it supports up to 128 primary partitions.
📌Differences between MBR and GPT
According to the above, the most important differences between MBR and GPT are the following:
- MBR is supported on most operating systems while GPT only works on 64-bit operating systems.
- MBR is only capable of handling disks up to 2TB while GPT handles disks up to 256TB in capacity.
- MBR only supports 4 primary partitions, so if more than 4 partitions are required, extended partitions should be used, while GPT is capable of supporting up to 128 primary partitions.
