3 Ways To Check if Your HD Partition Scheme is MBR or GPT
There are many reasons why you may need to find out which partition scheme (or style) is being used to manage a hard drive. In a windows environment, the partition style will always be either MBR or GPT.
It is very important to know which scheme your drive is using before tampering with it. It can also help you determine how your motherboard firmware is configured. For those of you who are here for that reason, here’s the basic info, configuration and rules.
Hard Drive Partition Scheme:
MBR: Master Boot Record
Motherboard Firmware Configuration:
BIOS: Basic Input Output System
Quick Notes:
This is the classic configuration.
It is usually found on older computers as the only configuration.
It is sometimes referred to as Legacy Boot.
BIOS based systems will recognize GPT drives once Windows loads.
BIOS based Windows systems can not BOOT from GPT drives.
Hard Drive Partition Scheme:
GPT: GUID Partition Table (Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table)
Motherboard Firmware Configuration:
UEFI: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
Quick Notes:
This is the more modern configuration.
It is found on most newer computers.
Officially released in 2007, becoming popular around 2010.
Most UEFI based systems support BIOS (or Legacy) mode and can be switched in the firmware settings.
UEFI based systems can recognize MBR drives once Windows is loaded.
UEFI based systems will not BOOT from MBR drives unless set to Legacy or BIOS mode.
Anyway, there are many ways to get this info. We will focus on 3 common ways to check a drive’s partition style using Windows OS. No 3rd party software needed.
If you want to check an external drive, make sure it’s connected to the computer. Click the method below that best suits you and jump right to it.
CHECK PARTITION SCHEME USING POWERSHELL
Note: Depending on your windows version, PowerShell may not be available to you. It wasn’t added to Windows natively until Windows 7 Service Pack 1.
1: Open the Start Menu
2: Type powershell then select one of the PowerShell options that appear.
3: In PowerShell, type ‘get-disk’, then press ENTER.
Give it a second to do some stuff. PowerShell will return info about all readable drives that are connected to your computer. Make sure your window is wide enough to show the info in a single line if possible. The partition style for each drive will be listed on the far right.
And that’s all folks! You’re done.
Now go make some Power moves!
CHECK PARTITION SCHEME USING DISK MANAGEMENT
1: Open the Start Menu
2: Type ‘Disk Management’ then select “Create and format hard disk partitions’ when it pops up. The Windows disk manager will open.
3: In the bottom pane of the disk manager, you will see each drive or ‘Disk’ and its partitions. Correctly identify the disk number you want to obtain info for.
4: Right-click the desired disk on the far left and select properties to open the drive properties window.
5: In the drive properties window, click the ‘Volumes’ tab. Your partition style will be listed as below.
You’re done! Close the properties window and the Disk Management window.
Be careful messing around with those Disk Drives!!!
Good Luck.
CHECK PARTITION SCHEME USING COMMAND PROMPT
1: Open Start Menu and type ‘cmd’.
2: Right-click the command prompt/cmd option that appears and select “Run as administrator”.
3: In the command prompt, type ‘diskpart’ and press ENTER.
Give it time for the response to appear. When ready, the DiskPart version and computer name will be displayed. The path will change to DISKPART>
4: Type ‘list disk’ and press ENTER
Diskpart will respond with basic info for each readable drive that is connected to your computer. On the far right you will see a ‘Gpt’ column. If a drive has an asterisk in this section, it uses GPT. If this section is blank, the disk uses MBR.
5: Type ‘exit’ and press ENTER to leave DiskPart.
6: Type ‘exit’ and press ENTER again to close the command prompt window.
That’s all he wrote! And you’re done.
Good luck on all your positive hard drive endeavors!
Leave a Reply