Users Guide

Installing Windows Small Business Server 2011 17
Partitioning a Drive
Drive partitioning allows you to divide a physical hard drive into multiple
virtual hard drives. Each virtual hard drive is called a partition.
There are two types of partition schemes:
• Master boot record scheme
• GUID partition table scheme
Master Boot Record Scheme
Master boot record (MBR) scheme is a legacy partition scheme that can be
used by most operating systems. The total data storage space of a computer
hard drive is divided into at most four primary partitions.
GUID Partition Table Scheme
GUID partition table (GPT) scheme is a new standard for the layout of the
partition table on a physical hard drive. It is part of the extensible firmware
interface (EFI) standard, which is a replacement for the system BIOS.
Ta b le 1 provides information about the basic level of support provided by
each of these partition schemes.
Table 1. Support Level Provided by Partition Schemes
Support MBR Hard
Drive
GPT Hard
Drive
Legacy operating systems like DOS, Microsoft Windows
98 and so on
Yes No
Hard drive size of more than 2 TB No Yes
Data hard drive in x86 version of operating systems Yes Yes
Data hard drive in x64 version of operating systems Yes Yes
Boot hard drive in x86 version of operating systems Yes No
Boot hard drive in x64 version of operating systems Yes Yes
More than four primary partitions No Yes
Booting support through BIOS mode Yes No
Booting support through UEFI mode No Yes