Hardware New Machine HDD Setup GPT vs MBR

[TerraMimic]

Ok, so I finally got myself a new computer after 7 years of working with my old one. I'm running Win 7 Pro 64-bit with a UEFI bios.

In reading about UEFI, I came across a new method of storing boot records to hard drives, GPT, as opposed to the more traditional MBR (master boot record). From what I've been able to learn so far, if I'm running with the bios in full UEFI mode (which allows it to take full advantage of the advance power management and overclocking features), I need to have the main system drive setup as GPT so the operating system will boot.

What I'm wondering is if I need to have all of my drives set up as GPT, or if I can get away with leaving them as MBR? I'm moving some drives from my old system over, and would prefer not to format them. Are there any advantages to using GPT vs MBR? The drives I'm moving are 1 - 2 TB, so I don't know if changing it would be of any benefit.

 

[orb]

What I'm wondering is if I need to have all of my drives set up as GPT, or if I can get away with leaving them as MBR?

You'll only need it on the drive you'll boot from. Partition tables after boot are handled by the system drivers, so you don't need to repartition/convert old drives using MBR to be handled correctly if the OS you'll be using supports MBR partition tables just fine (and most systems do, unless you configure and compile the kernel from sources, and remove the MBR support while doing that).

There's no real advantage of using it on drives < 2 TiB, unless you expect that something might overwrite the 1st sector of the disk.

 

[yhgfh]

firstly, the maximum size of a disk that MBR can support is 2TB, so if the size of disk is more than 2TB, you can only use 2TB. while GPT doesn't have this limitation. besides, the MBR supports four primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition.
more difference: gpt vs mbr