MBR Disk and GPT Disk

MBR and GPT are two different kinds of disk partitioning formats.

In the past years, MBR was widely used as the only partitioning format for Windows system disks due to the limitations of BIOS and operating systems. With the development of IT and the emergence of UEFI-supported motherboard, to adopt GPT for disk partitioning becomes more and more popular. Many users begin to find ways to convert MBR to GPT.

In comparison to MBR, GPT has more advantages. Since MBR was designed to be able to store only four partition table, MBR disks allow users to create primary partitions numbered within just four. However, the design of GPT makes GPT disks have no such limitation; the primary partitions can be created as many as users want (only limited by the operating system in using). On the other hand, it is restricted to create a partition/volume which is bigger than 2 TB with a MBR disk. Contrarily, GPT disks break that restriction and support a partition/volume up to 18 EB. These are the main differences between MBR and GPT.

As users can see, GPT is becoming more and more popular with its advantageous features. Hence, there begins to be many situations where users need to change MBR to GPT. But, how to do that? Actually, it is known for some users that Windows systems have a built-in tool named Disk Management which is quite helpful for some simple disk management, including the function of converting disk from MBR to GPT. However, that tool is quite restricted: before converting a MBR disk to GPT, all the partitions on that disk must be deleted. Meanwhile, all the data on the disk will be destroyed in the beginning of the conversion.

How to Convert MBR to GPT without Data Loss

Users can actually use third party tools like MiniTool Partition Wizard to enjoy a lossless conversion between MBR and GPT disks. It is easy and safe, being much better than Disk Management.

Install MiniTool Partition Wizard, and run it to get the main interface.

Click on a disk to make it the target disk which needs to be converted to GPT (system disk can’t be converted due to the result that boot failure would occur).

Click “Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk” in the action panel to continue (it is also OK to select “Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk” from the right-click menu of the disk or drop-down list of “Disk” in the menu bar).

Click “Apply” to implement the conversion. Wait for the automatic processing. Done!

From the instruction above, it is obvious that to convertMBR to GPT without data loss is possible.  MiniTool Partition Wizard has a good performance in disk management. Feel free to know more about it on the website.