Can I run a second GTP hard disk on a NON-UEFI MBR based system?

pstein · 27 Jan 2014

Assume I have a BIOS (=NON-UEFI) based system/motherboard with a first MBR based hard disk (which contain the winOS 7 system).

Now I want to attach a second, big (3 TB) hard disk.

Due to the size I have to set it up as GPT hard disk.

Can such a second GPT hard disk co-exist with a first MBR based hard disk (if it is attached directly
to the SATA mainboard slot)?

Assume I put the second GPT based hard disk into an external USB case.
Can such a second GPT hard disk co-exist with a MBR based system mentioned above?

If both answers are negative: Is there another solution (without migration to UEFI)?

I want to use the second hard disk only for data storage. No bootable system should be installed on it.
Peter

Brink · 27 Jan 2014

Hello Peter,

Yes, that would work just fine since they are separate hard disks, and the GPT disk will not be an OS disk. :)

jumanji · 27 Jan 2014

Both answers positive.

You should be good to go with the GPT drive as a second data drive on your PC Bios system as well as an external drive.

[I have carried out my trials on a 750GB Seagate external drive as a GPT drive.(System PC Bios and not UEFI)]

Whichever way you do, I would advise you to back up Sectors 0, 1, 2, plus all the volume boot records and save it to another location. [ In the screenshot I have two partitions. So I would back up sector 34 (Microsoft System Reserved), sector 262178, and sector 732818343. Each sector file will be 512 bytes]

Can I run a second GTP hard disk on a NON-UEFI MBR based system?-27-01-2014-13-30-17.jpg

In case of any corruption of partition table/VBR, it will come handy to restore the original.

Note: If you make changes in the partition structure you have to back up the sectors afresh.

To acquaint yourself with Bootice, which you will be using to backup and restore go to Lost partitions!

Disk View: