Should I Use MBR Or GPT for Storage Drive?

MBR or GPT, which one is better for storage drive?

Storage drive MBR or GPT? MBR or GPT for external hard drive? GPT or MBR for SSD? When we use a new hard drive, choosing the partition style is often a headache. Many people do not know which partition style to choose when initializing disk with Disk Management, because it does not provide other additional instructions. But don’t worry, this article aims to tell you should choose MBR or GPT for storage drive.

According to the current mainstream trend, using GPT storage drive is a better choice than MBR. Because GPT storage drive have advantages in partition size, number of partitions. As a new partition style, GPT has gradually replaced MBR.

It is worth mentioning that Microsoft’s newly released Windows 11 clearly requires that upgrading to Windows 11 needs to be in UEFI boot mode, which means that your system disk needs to be a GPT disk. So, if you are using MBR disks, you need to convert MBR to GPT for Windows 11.

What’s the difference between MBR and GPT?

MBR is the abbreviation of Master Boot Record, which is an older partition style. GPT is the abbreviation of GUID Partition Table. Compared with MBR, it is a new partition style suitable for current large-capacity hard disks. The main differences between MBR and GPT are as follows:

✦ MBR disks can only be divided into 4 primary partitions or 3 primary partitions + 1 extended partition, while GPT has no limit on the number of partitions (Windows supports up to 128 partitions).
✦ MBR maximum disk size is 2 TB, but GPT can support 256 TB.
✦ MBR disk is booted by BIOS, and GPT is booted by UEFI.
✦ GPT partition disks have redundant primary partition tables and backup partition tables to improve the integrity of the partition data structure.

How to convert storage drive to MBR or GPT (data loss)?

From what has been discussed above, do you know that storage drive should choose MBR or GPT? If you have a brand-new unused storage drive, you can initialize it as a GPT disk or MBR disk through the Initialize Disk of Disk Management. If you have selected the MBR partition style, but want to convert MBR to GPT, do you know how to do it?

You can use Diskpart to convert MBR to GPT. Diskpart is a command prompt tool that comes with Windows. It executes various operations on the disk by entering instructions. The specific method is as follows:

Step 1. Press “Windows + R” at the same time, input “diskpart” and press Enter.

Step 2. Input “list disk” and press Enter.

Step 3. Input “select disk 1” and press Enter. (1 is the number of disk you want to convert)

Step 4. Input “clean” and press Enter. (this operation will delete all partitions on the disk)

Step 5. Input “convert gpt” and press Enter.

Step 6. Finally, type in “exit” to back to desktop.

After that, you have converted storage drive from MBR to GPT successfully. However, since this method will delete partitions on the storage drive, please make sure that you have backed it up before performing the operation. And inputting the command prompt is risky, any improper operation may cause undesirable consequences to the storage drive.

Convert storage drive to MBR or GPT on Windows without deleting data

AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional (support Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, Vista and XP users) is one of the best MBR to GPT conversion tools on the market, it allows you to convert between MBR and GPT without erasing any data. It has a friendly interface and all functions are clear at a glance. The most exciting thing is that the operation of this partition manager is very simple, suitable for users without a computer background.

In addition to converting the storage drive to MBR or GPT, AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro can also convert the file system of the storage drive from NTFS to FAT32.

Step 1. Install and launch the software, right-click the MBR disk you want to change, and then choose Convert to GPT Disk or click the disk and choose Convert to GPT from the right panel.

Step 2. In the pop-up windows, click OK to continue.

Step 3. Click Apply to operate and then your disk will be changed into GPT disk style.

End line

This article explains in detail that you should choose MBR or GPT when initializing the storage drive and how to achieve the conversion between MBR and GPT. By the way, AOMEI Partition Assistant Server is specially designed for Windows Server users. If you want to perform operations on Windows Server, please upgrade to the advanced version.