Disk Initialisation MBR or GPT

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Migit78

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Aug 23, 2014
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I just bought a WD Green 4TB HDD, I need to initialise the disk but its giving me the option of MBR or GPT and I don't know what the differences are.

This drive is just going to be storage for Movies, TV shows etc. Just extra room on my PC really. Does that effect which format I should choose.
By default its selected GPT.
 
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GPT is the right way, BUT there is another factor to consider. That is, exactly which version of Windows are you using?

First of all, Win XP never had support for HDD's over 2 TB. You should be using Win 7 or later for this. ALSO important: Windows needs a different HDD device driver for GPT-Partitioned HDD units, and Microsoft ONLY provided those for their 64-bit versions of Windows. So you really need to be using 64-bit (NOT 32-bit) Win 7 or 8.

The fact that you are NOT trying to boot from this new unit means you do NOT need the new UEFI-Enabled BIOS on your mobo, so don't worry about that item.
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crystal_tech

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Sep 19, 2007
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gpt if you want to use the drive as a whole drive, if you use mbr you'll have to have smaller partitions (aka logical drives) to use it all.

gpt adds a bit more overhead and might make things harder to image (full disk image) but yea.
 
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Paperdoc

Polypheme
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Oct 19, 2006
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GPT is the right way, BUT there is another factor to consider. That is, exactly which version of Windows are you using?

First of all, Win XP never had support for HDD's over 2 TB. You should be using Win 7 or later for this. ALSO important: Windows needs a different HDD device driver for GPT-Partitioned HDD units, and Microsoft ONLY provided those for their 64-bit versions of Windows. So you really need to be using 64-bit (NOT 32-bit) Win 7 or 8.

The fact that you are NOT trying to boot from this new unit means you do NOT need the new UEFI-Enabled BIOS on your mobo, so don't worry about that item.
 
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