Windows 10: MBR vs. GPT

Are there solid benefits in switching from standard MBR to GPT? Now that I have Windows 10, I'm wondering if I should do it. I have no need for more partitions (currently 3 drives with 1 primary partition each) or partitions larger than 2TB and likely never will. But I'm curious if there are other good reasons why I should make the switch and give up some SSD space for the couple of small system partitions that would be added. Is UEFI booting necessarily better?

:)

 

Restoring Windows 10 from backup ISO

Hi,

The new drive may have been preformatted as the wrong type of drive...

GPT vs MBR... When your old one is finished, check to see which it is, and compare to the new one...

 

Installing and booting windows 10 on a GPT partition

Do you have a UEFI BIOS? This is the only way you can install Windows to a GPT disk, otherwise it can only be used to intialize data disks, especially if you want them to be larger than the 2tb limit Windows has for MBR (Legacy BIOS) disks.

GPT vs MBR Disk Comparison

To find this out, type msinfo in Start Search, in System Information look at the BIOS type. If MBR you most likely have Legacy BIOS. But you can boot into BIOS setup to check for UEFI settings that may be disabled, or CSM/Legacy BIOS that may be disabled.
To install to UEFI one must also boot the installation media as a UEFI device.

More here:
Clean Install Windows 10

and here:
UEFI BIOS vs. Legacy BIOS - YouTube

 

As far as I know, you cannot just change from one to the other. You have to wipe all partitions and reformat the hard disk. I don't believe this is what you want. If I remember correctly, there is a 4TB limit on MBR, so in 6TB or larger hard disks you either split to 4TB maximum partitions or you have to choose GPT when initializing the hard disk. I don't think there is any performance difference between the two, I might be wrong though. Also if your system boots fine as it is then avoid messing with EFI etc or you might not be able to boot from DVD or other device. If it works, don't fix it, as they say.

 

Partition Wizard can do the switch from either to the other. I'm just curious to know if there is sufficient benefit in GPT other than additional partitions and partition sizes to merit changing. The more I see, the more I'm thinking no.

 

Here is a good explanation

http://www.sevenforums.com/performan...ml#post2204666

 

I prefer MBR for backwards compatibility. I would not bother in your case IMHO. I usually work with PE or Linux livecds and the such and there are a lot of trouble trying to change/repair GPT partitions.

 

Thanks to all for your replies. I think I should stick with MBR. *Smile