disk initialization : MBR or GPT

[vercetti]

had a 1.5Tb lying around. Was unable to put it to my desktop as there were no free sata ports.
Finally decided to make my dvd USB and use the sata for 1.5tb hdd

I have installed windows 7.
So when I try to initialize the disk…it gives my 2 options MBR and GPT
Which one should I choose?

Also, is it better to have dynamic or basic disk partitions

[lastguyonthenet]

I installed a new 500 GB HDD 2 days back. I opted for MBR and Basic Volume.

GPT provides a more flexible mechanism for partitioning disks than the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme that has been common to PCs.

Windows and GPT FAQ: Version 1.1

I threw together this quick comparison table (for Windows):

*Windows/NTFS restricts number of partitions to 128 and a maximum partition size of 256 TB; GPT allows effectively infinite number of partitions and effectively infinite partition size

http://www.orthogonalthought.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/mbr-vs-gpt-comparison-windows-vista/

Basic volumes and dynamic volumes differ in ability to extend storage beyond one physical disk. The basic partitions are confined to one disk and their size is fixed. Dynamic volumes allow to adjust size and to add more free space either from the same disk or another physical disk. Dynamic volumes using space on different physical disks are called spanned volumes. Presently spanned volume can use a maximum of 32 physical disks.

The main differences between basic and dynamic disks are:

* Dynamic disks support multipartition volumes; basic disks do not.
* Windows stores basic disk partition information in the registry and dynamic disk partition information on the disk

Logical Disk Manager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[kekerode]

^ nice comparison

@vercetti : Sure GPT give a new level (but only useful with EFI) … but Windows still doesn’t support boot from GPT disk … except Itanium architecture and yours is x86_64

So if you have any plan to install Windows on it and boot from that HDD … then simply wait till MS provides that support. However boot from GPT is totally supported in Linux.

In case of dynamic partitions … you can resize your partitions later with un-partitioned free space … but partiton may not be readable under lower version of Windows

[vercetti]

Thanks guys…
I did a research myself and finally chose MBR and then Basic disk partitioning

[nRiTeCh]

can GPT formatted disk drive be accesssed normally under windows xp and 2000?

[lastguyonthenet]

Windows XP x64 Edition can access GPT disks for data read/write but cannot boot from it while Windows XP x32 and 2000 cannot use GPT disks.