Hard Drive Partitioning - MBR vs. GPT and Basic vs. Dynamic Disks

[@strouja]

I just tell folks to use GPT and NTFS. For some reason years ago when I built a windows 10 computer, I selected MBR. When I went to upgrade to Windows 11, I could not I had to literally wipe the whole computer out and start over again and make the drive GPT. I’m pretty sure it had to do with Windows 11 requiring UEFI

[@thewhiteriver777]

Funny I just formatted a PC with win 11 23h2 using mbr and had no major issues. Only oddity is a 3TB HDD being detected as 2.72TB while on my proxmox server it was detected as 3TB. So I might need to reformate just to fix that issue

[@daffydlandegge3843]

You shouldve included how to fix or undo or combibe those partitions too lol My 3 TB (MBR) drive separated into a 2 TB & and a not even close to a 1 TB drive (woth their own Drive letter (???) Former computer i had formatted it in was only compatible with 2 TB max

[@FalloutGod]

A partition isn't the same thing as a system volume. A volume is what has the file system. So windows might see a partition but not recognize the file system and be unable to do anything with it. While in many cases a partition holds a single volume this is not always true, as in an MRB extended partition there can be more than one with the help of a virtual disk. Saying a partition holds the file system is just going to confuse a bunch of people who are already struggling to grasp these concepts.

[@daffydlandegge3843]

That could explain how I have a 3 TB drive broken up into a 2 TB drive and a maybe 150-ish GB drive (I lost that other TB somehow) and cannot fix back to a full 3 TB drive 🤷‍♂️

[@FalloutGod]

@@daffydlandegge3843 Is it MBR? MBR has a 2TB partition limit.

[@daffydlandegge3843]

@FalloutGod yes... back from the old Windows 7 era it locked out the 1 TB due to that 2 Tb limit I had no idea about and every video back then was saying to use MBR. I fixed it though... here's how; Disk Management window... selected the allocated partition of THAT drive. Deleted it to unallocate it. Right clicked on the far left portion where is has the Disk + number (0 or 1 or 2, etc)... selected "convert MBR to GPT" and it automatically combined the 2 separated partitions. Then simply went into the simple volume option as normal to "activate" the drive Done lol

[@FalloutGod]

@@daffydlandegge3843 Yeah, if you don't mind data loss or have nothing important on there then deleting and converting is the simple route.