GPT or MBR - any differences on an SSD in Windows 7?

[MrMuppet]

For compatbility reasons I'm leaning towards using MBR on the Windows 7 system SSD instead of GPT for my new rig. Since SSDs are so small, GPT isn't needed for that reason, nor do I need more than four primary partitions.

My question is, are there any other drawbacks to using MBR on the SSD? Any performance losses? For instance, will the computer (or BIOS/UEFI) boot slower using MBR?

The motherboard will be an ASRock Z77 Extreme4 btw, if that matters. Thanks!

 

[MrMuppet]

Any clues anyone? Would using MBR for my new Windows 7 SSD be a bad idea on a UEFI motherboard? Good night.

 

[Maximilian]

No difference, GPT has some additional protection against corrupted boot sectors or something, i cant remember what i read about it but the being able to boot from a 2TB+ drive is the main feature, there arent any other differences as far as i know. Might as well go with GPT, its newer.

 

[Lifted]

No experience here with GPT on workstations, only servers requiring partitions of many TB. I doubt you'd find any major performance differences between the two on Win 7 system. There will obviously be some difference, but will it be perceivable on a standard workstation?

As you can probably install Windows 7 and all drivers on that system in under an hour, you can try both and determine if you notice any difference during booting and usage, and run a few disk benchmarks... then report your findings back to us.

 

[MrMuppet]

I initialized the SSD as MBR in another computer and then installed Windows 7 x64. It boots plenty fast. Like the two of you said, I doubt there's a noticeable performance difference, it would appear the UEFI supports MBR "natively" as well.

Thanks.

 

[Pray To Jesus]

can't boot GPT last time I tried

 

[MrMuppet]

can't boot GPT last time I tried

That's with a "legacy" BIOS. With UEFI you not only can, Windows 7 setup even (usually) initializes the system drive as GPT by default, when booting the setup in UEFI mode.

 

[Nothinman]

I would lean towards a legacy, MBR as that allows for more compatibility with partitioning, recovery, etc tools.