Install Guide

Drive partitioning

Drive partitioning enables you to divide a hard drive disk space into multiple Virtual Drives (VDs). Each VD is called a partition.

There are two types of partition schemes:

● Master Boot Record scheme

● GUID Partition Table scheme

The main considerations for selecting between the partition schemes are:

● Hard drive disk space

● Operating system version

● Software installed or to be installed in the operating system

Topics:

• Master boot record scheme

• GUID partition table scheme

Master boot record scheme

Most of the operating systems use the Master Boot Record (MBR) legacy partition scheme. The total data storage space of a

computer hard drive is divided into a maximum of four primary partitions.

The MBR partition scheme is used across older versions of the Microsoft operating systems. MBR partitioning scheme supports

a volume size lesser than 2 TB.

For more information about partitions and volumes, see the Partitions and Volumes section at www.technet.microsoft.com.

GUID partition table scheme

GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme is a new standard for the layout of the partition table on a hard drive. It is part of the

extensible firmware interface (EFI) standard, which is a replacement for the system BIOS.

NOTE:

It is recommended that you use the GPT partition scheme as it is more flexible, supports larger hard drive sizes, and

has some features and recovery mechanisms that are not available in the MBR partition scheme.

For more information about partitions and volumes, see the Partitions and Volumes section at www.technet.microsoft.com. For

information about GPT, see the Windows and GPT FAQ section at www.microsoft.com.

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