Are my drives partition type really still MBR when disk management says so?

[vziera]

My 180 GB system's drive might really be an MBR given the small size but how is my 4 TB an MBR too?

Is there any way to change them into GPT?

Thanks

 

[R-T-B]

It won't be easy to change them. At least not the boot disk.

I think MBR has a 4TB max size, but don't quote me on that. That MIGHT explain it.

 

[AsRock]

I believe you have to format the whole drive to get a GPT setup

 

[vziera]

I heard some third party disk management apps can turn MBR into GPT without losing a thing, are they trustworthy?

 

[R-T-B]

I heard some third party disk management apps can turn MBR into GPT without losing a thing, are they trustworthy?

They probably work. They are also probably commercial. I don't know of any "free" apps that'll convert a boot drive.

 

[OneMoar]

its possible to convert a drive to gpt from mbr without wiping the drive and without commercial softwar
http://www.sabrnet.cz/2015/03/convert-windows-system-mbr-disk-to-gpt-with-efi-without-data-loss/
heres a big fat red warning
HERE BE DRAGONS,IF YOU ATTEMPT THE ABOVE TUTORIAL MAKE SURE YOU DO A BACKUP FIRST DON'T COME CRYING HERE WHEN YOU NUKE ALL YOUR DATA AND RENDER YOUR OS UNBOOTABLE ALSO USE COMMON SENSE DOUBLE AND TRIPLE CHECK THAT YOU ARE SELECTING THE CORRECT PARTITION OR DRIVE LETTER BEFORE RUNNING OPERATIONS!,THERE IS ALSO A CHANCE IT MAY NOT WORK AT ALL AND YOU WILL BE REINSTALLING/RESTORING FROM BACKUPS ANYWAY

 

[R-T-B]

I selectively left that out because it's very very iffy and I had bad results with it. And I'm hardly a newb at these things.

 

[de.das.dude]

related: i had to clone my old laptop into a new wd blue which supports gpt.... is mine mbr or gbt?

 

[vziera]

Any performance increases from using GPT? I mean I think if it's only about compatibility to larger drive capacities and unlimited partition in each drive but no say, write/read speed increase, I think I'll just stay with MBR /:

 

[W1zzard]

Any performance increases from using GPT

none

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there again, @vziera

The WD My Book external drives are configured with 4KB LBAs (and the enclosure itself is setup with the same 4KB sector size) instead of the native 512 byte emulation (which is typical for standard SATA-connected HDDs). Usually, with 512e LBAs and sectors an MBR drive has a 2.2 TB limit, but with a 4096 byte advanced format you can have up to 16 TB partition size.
In your case, the WD My Book is simply detected as a 4096 byte sector drive and that's why you are able to have a 4 TB HDD with the MBR partition table.
However, I'd recommend you to simply re-format it as GPT through Disk Management if it's bothering you so much, but I wouldn't use third-party utilities for this. You'd still need to back up the data either way, because it's better safe than sorry, right? So once you have the backup, you might as well simply re-format the WD My Book.
As @W1zzard mentioned, there are no HDD performance changes when it comes to partition tables though.

SuperSoph_WD

 

[R-T-B]

Yeah the only difference is number of allowed partitions and total disk size. Nothing to worry about and no performance penalty.

 

[vziera]

Thank you everybody for clearing that up for me, so 4k LBA is the tech that makes it possible

I think I'll leave it as MBR atm. Btw hey it's @SuperSoph_WD !

 

[AsRock]

Any performance increases from using GPT? I mean I think if it's only about compatibility to larger drive capacities and unlimited partition in each drive but no say, write/read speed increase, I think I'll just stay with MBR /:

I did not notice any in Windows 10, in fact i cannot remember the long ass pause on startup when i was not using it.

However, when i upgraded to Win10 it was still on MBR which after 5-6 days windows 10 ran just fine i was actually happy with it.

After those days i reinstalled with a GPT as i wanted to test the faster startup options and noticed on both attempts as i thought i had a borked install it always paused at some point on the cold boot startup.