Benefits of GPT vs MBR Primary and MBR Logical Partitions ?

Which one is faster?I tried both and felt MBR to be slightly faster than GPT. I don't have crazy drives hence don't really need GPT but my motherboard supports it so went ahead and tried it. It feels slightly slower than MBR. Anyone with any experience using both?

Rockfella said:

Which one is faster?I tried both and felt MBR to be slightly faster than GPT. I don't have crazy drives hence don't really need GPT but my motherboard supports it so went ahead and tried it. It feels slightly slower than MBR. Anyone with any experience using both?

Never noticed any difference, but I didn't break out a stopwatch or run benchmarks.

The main reason I'd use GPT is to be able to use all of a large drive and that's much more important to me than whatever miniscule speed advantage MBR might have---if any.

I'm very surprised that you found a speed difference.... Do you mean boot time? Other than that there should be absolutely no difference.

jumanji said:

I am an average user :), honestly. ( looks, reads very complicated but once you do it you know you can do it and if I can do it then anyone can.)

Why is this any different than MBR? GPT has redundant structures that make it less likely the disk boot sectors will be unrecoverably corrupted than with MBR and your are making it sound worse.

Why would you need to save both the primary and backup sectors- you need only save one or the other.

If the data is important, make a backup image or have a copy on another drive. Being able to fix a drive's boot sectors only gives you a sense of false security IMO. If these sectors get corrupted, it is likely your data is ass well.

With all due respect, data backups are NOT RELEVANT to the topic in hand,
which is concerned with the relevant merits of GPT and MBR style Disks.

Post #7 indicates how useless GPT can be as a backup because a backup that fails is USELESS as a backup.

I received a Windows 7 Desktop already configured with System C: installed on an MBR Disk because the hardware/BIOS lacked the ability to boot from GPT.

My main use for the GPT disk was to create and maintain on-line Macrium Reflect image backups of C:\,
and to frequently duplicate those backups to USB and eSATA connected disks.

Life is too short to make a backup of every backup of EACH backup.
So I do not waste my time,

One morning Windows woke up stupid,
and decided that the GPT disk had the disk identity of my MBR disk, and put my MBR disk (C:\) offline.

I was able to eventually give the original MBR disk a new identity to replace that which had been stolen,
and put the imitation MBR disk off-line.
Windows does NOT allow me to correct the disk ID of the original GPT DISC, and that puts ALL on-line backups out of bounds.

I needed Lazesoft Data Recovery to retrieve those backups to off-line storage.

I have seen no reason to defer changing my DEAD-OFFLINE Disk to MBR,
and this should avoid any repetition of the same Windows stupidity.

Regards
Alan

GeneO said:

From what I have read, it wasn't as simple as your system woke up stupid. You booted to a SysLinux flash drive, it crashed, and when you rebooted you found that the GPT disk was no longer recognized as such. That the flash boot failed is an indication it was doing something stupid. If I had to guess, it would be that the flash boot saw the disk as a damaged MBR and overwrote the partition type of 0xEE and tried to repair it, turning it into a regular MBR. The partition type had to have been changed, and when it did, it was recognized as a valid MBR partition. You may have tried this, but I would beet that if you changed the partition type of the MBR back to 0xEE, you would have recovered your gpt disk.

Where were you when I asked years ago how to turn my disk back to GPT ! ! !
ALL INTELLECTUAL GIANTS AT THAT TIME FAILED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM.

Please explain how and why Windows would decide that it was appropriate to IGNORE all the good disks,
and deliberately choose to not only re-write a long and complex GPT GUID as a simple and short 8 digit number,
but to ALSO ARBITRARILY USE THE SAME 8 DIGIT NUMBER EMPLOYED by my system C:\ MBR SSD Disk,
and THEN PUT MY SSD OFF-LINE,
and try to boot my trashed GPT disk as C:\ ! ! !

Software such as Macrium Reflect and Hard Disk Analyzer,
AND ALL THEIR COMPETITORS,
were dependent upon disk numbers, and that was good with IDE.
All partition image users had problems once SATA came along,
and Macrium Reflect were the first to overcome the new idiosyncrasies with Windows.

Obviously Windows itself is fundamentally flawed and cannot start up in a predictable controlled fashion.

Yes, I have dabbled with SysLinux
BUT NO -SYSLINUX WAS NOT PART OF THE PROBLEM,
and I cannot find where in this topic you had cause to think it was.

WINDOWS IS STUPID.
It does NOT number SATA disks according to how they are physically connected but in "order of enumeration",
which is MickyMouse speak for "a race hazard we cannot handle - just deal with it."

My SSD is always enumerated last, as number 3,
BUT ONLY when I first switch on the P.C. at the start of the day.
If I ever REBOOT then the SSD is NORMALLY either number 1 or 2.
Further evidence of a STUPID WINDOWS RACE HAZARD.

Regards
Alan