Changes

== 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 formatted with a particular file system (FAT, FAT32 or NTFS) and used either as a basic disk or as dynamic disk. Obviously, the operating system needs some mechanism for organizing and managing these disk partitions and Windows Server 2008 provides two such partitioning styles named Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT).

GPT disks differ quite considerably from MBR disks. In terms of capability, GPT supports disks up to 18 Exabytes in size with up 128 partitions. GPT also differs from MBR in terms of layout.

At the start of a GPT disk is an MBR. The MBR in this case, however, is provided purely so that the disk will be recognized by disk utilities that do not recognize GPT disks. To an MBR disk utility, the disk will appear to be an MBR disk with a single partition taking up the entire disk space.