Adding New GPT and MBR Disks to Windows Server 2008 Systems

The purpose of this chapter of Windows Server 2008 Essentials is to provide an overview of the decisions and steps necessary to add new disk drives to a Windows Server 2008 system. Installing a new disk drive is not just about formatting the drive and creating volumes. With Windows Server 2008 decisions need to be made about the partitioning style since both Master Boot Record (MBR) or GUID Partition Table (GPT) disks are supported in this latest version of Windows. Given this requirement, this chapter will also provide an explanation of the difference between MBR and GPT disks.

An Overview of MBR and GPT Partitions Styles

Before a disk can be used to store data it must first have partitions created on it. These partitions are then formated with a particular file system (FAT, FAT32, NTFS) and used either as a basic disk or as dynamic disk). Obviosuly, the operating system needs some mechanism for organize and manage these disk partitions and Windows Server 2008 provides two such partitioning styles known as Master Boot Record (MBR) or GUID Partition Table (GPT).

The MBR style was originally developed for x86-based computer systems is by far the most common style in use at present. GPT, on the other hand was originally developed for 64-bit Itanium based systems. With the arrival of Windows Server 2008 both x86 32-bit and 64-bit systems support MBR and GPT partition styles. It is important that 32-bit systems can only boots from MBR disk partitions and 64-bit systems can only boot from GPT partitions.

Understanding MBR Disks

With MBR the first sector of the disk is reserved to store a partition table and the master boot record. The remainder of the disk is divided into partitions, information about which is stored in the partition table. MBR supports volume sizes up to 4TB.

MBR on a basic disk supports two partition types, primary and extended. The primary partition has a file system created directly on it and is then either assigned a drive letter or mount point by which it is referenced by the user. An extended partition is divided into one or more logical drives, each of which is then formatted and then assigned drive letter or mount point.

A basic disk with MBR partition style can support either four primary partitions or three primary partitions and one extended partition (which in turn can support multiple logical volumes).