Windows 10: I have a new 4TB external HDD and a non-UEFI BIOS. MBR or GPT?

I plugged my new, empty Western Digital 4TB external drive into my old PC, and it is a MBR HDD. The PC is too old to have UEFI. I want the drive to be as reliable as possible and to work on my new (UEFI) PC as well. Should I convert it to GPT now?
Both PCs are on Windows 10.

:)

 

Change from BIOS to UEFI

BIOS supports MBR which has a limit or 2.2TB drives.

UEFI allows much more and I am gong to use a 4TB drive.

 

Windows 10 installation on 4tb hdd on GPT partition with UEFI mode system.

Original Title: windows 10 installation on 4tb hdd

Hello,

I have a new Seagate 4tb hdd and gigabyte H110M motherboard (UEFI) in a desktop computer. When I install windows 10 x64 it only shows up as 2tb. I have converted the hdd to gpt partitioning (as apparently this is what I need to do to show whole hdd) but
when I install win 10 it converts it back to mbr and still only shows it as 2tb. What do I need to do so windows installs in gpt format?

Thanks

Troy

 

I don't think GPT is really more reliable than MBR and either of your PCs could access either.

I think I'd convert it GPT though if it is still empty - you might decide you want more than 4 partitions in the future and this is easier with GPT. You can always change MBR to GPT later using partition management software but it is probably easier to do it now.

 

MBR only supports 2TB max. You must initialize with GPT to use all 4TB

 

Hi there

You can't BOOT from this drive on MBR but you can use the whole 4TB if you use it as a NON boot device and convert to GPT.

Use another drive or an SSD as MBR to boot from.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Can't you boot on MBR even if you make several smaller partitions?

 

This is the common wisdom, but untrue. Western Digital ships new 4TB external drives initialised to MBR. I'm not mistaken. I checked three different ways to see it was MBR.

 

Must have 4k sector size (you can check the bytes per sector with fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo x: ) so the limit for MBR is 8 times bigger ~16TB. I'd reformat it GPT based on this though..

windows 8.1 - How can a MBR formatted hard drive exceed 1.81 TiB capacity? - Super User

 

That is absolutely the clincher. GPT it is.
Thanks.