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GUID on large HD's

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dryfly

Member
I'm going to use a WD Purple 4TB drive on a server for an IP camera system. I would like to partition a 100MB area for Win 7 and the video monitoring software. I would like to partition the remainder of the drive as one large data storage partition.

Since I'm not going to boot off the large partition do I still need to partition it using GPT? What about the large 3 plus TB partition.
 
Well, first off, 100MB is way too small, I assume you mean 100GB. Secondly, standard MBR cannot access a partition greater than 2TB, so if you want a partition larger than that, you will need to use GPT.
 
My bad, I was still asleep this morning while posting. 100GB is correct on boot drive.

So, with 100GB boot partition and remaining 3.9TB data partition, do I use GPT on both or just the 3.9TB partition?
 
You should use MBR for the boot drive only if the computer uses a traditional BIOS. If it uses UEFI, go with GPT.
 
It doesn't quite work like that. You either initialize the disk with an MBR or a GPT. If you choose MBR, you are bound by MBR limitations. If you have a computer that can't interpret GPT, you likely have a computer that won't detect a 4TB hard drive in the BIOS.
 
OK, I understand, it's one or the other. Fortunately I have an ASrock MB that uses UEFI. I have since found they even have a utility for setting up large HD's so I'm good to go.

I will eventually put a small SSD in for OS and software and just use the 4TB for data. Looks like with no boot and just using for data that I can initialize the large HD with MBR or GPT, I'm assuming there is no advantage to one over the other in that situation?
 
GPT is preferred for index redundancy and is required for large volumes anyway. UEFI is only required to boot from same, so may be best avoided and use BIOS default CSM (Compatibility Support Module) instead.
 
Coup27 said:
You don't really need an SSD if it's just going to boot once and then idle running CCTV software. Just use an old small HDD if you have one spare.
Click to expand...

All my old small HD's are IDE interface and my new MB only supports SATA. I would gladly use one if I had it. Since I gotta buy something and don't need a lot of storage a small SSD is going to be about the same price as a cheap HD.

Isn't the boot drive still going to be spinning 24/7 since the computer will never go into sleep mode, just like the data drive??
 
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