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I just bought a new 2TB disk drive I plan to use as an external drive (connected via eSATA). When I started my computer it recognized the drive fine, but when I got into the Disk Management, a popup told me that I have to initialize that drive and I have to choose between MBR and GPT layout.
The drive will be primarily used on Windows 7 computers (both x86 and x64) as well as on a Windows Vista x64 computer (which is the one the message appeared on).
I do not plan to create multiple partitions on that drive as it is only supposed to be a data storage disk.
Which partition layout should I choose, MBR or GPT? The dialog itself recommends to use GPT on drives >= 2TB or on Itanium based computers, but I want to make sure that I will be able to access the drive later on my other computers.
Well, I don't plan to ever use an XP (or older) system - well, at least not in combination with this drive - so I guess I'm completely fine with GPT. Thanks! – poke – 2010-09-24T12:34:35.510
If you have <4 partitions won't XP be fine with the MBR compatibility stuff in GPT? – Glyph – 2012-06-03T20:13:16.813
@Glyph Actually GPT is safer because it doesn't have "hidden" data that may accidentally be deleted, and it stores the GPT entries in 2 places, so if one has problem it can use the backup one to restore. MBR uses only the first sector to store data so if it fails, you have posibility of losing data. – phuclv – 2014-05-24T14:46:15.457
Sure. I'm saying that GPT is better even if you do need XP support, because GPT has MBR emulation, but not the other way around. – Glyph – 2014-05-25T18:07:13.213