If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Disadvantages of GPT?
There are many good articles on the net which describe the advantages of GPT
over MBR, but none of that I've read describe its disadvantages well. What I've known about the disadvantages of GPT are those when using GPT. i.e. not the GPT itself. e.g.: - Compatibility with older utility softwares. e.g. boot managers, partition managers, etc. - There's still lack of recovery software which is specialized in GPT structure recovery. The only disadvantage of the GPT itself that I know for sure is that the overhead of GPT is larger than MBR. Mainly due to the fact that it uses 64-bit values. The other probable disadvantages is that the GPT partition type GUIDs may not cover all of the know MBR partition types. e.g. Novell Netware (when the GPT has a protective MBR to boot into that OS) - whether the GPT partition type actually matters or not. So, is there any other disadvantages of the GPT itself? e.g. minimum partition size would be larger than MBR's. Or, the partition alignment of GPT would be larger than MBR. etc. |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Disadvantages of GPT?
JJ wrote:
There are many good articles on the net which describe the advantages of GPT over MBR, but none of that I've read describe its disadvantages well. What I've known about the disadvantages of GPT are those when using GPT. i.e. not the GPT itself. e.g.: - Compatibility with older utility softwares. e.g. boot managers, partition managers, etc. - There's still lack of recovery software which is specialized in GPT structure recovery. The only disadvantage of the GPT itself that I know for sure is that the overhead of GPT is larger than MBR. Mainly due to the fact that it uses 64-bit values. The other probable disadvantages is that the GPT partition type GUIDs may not cover all of the know MBR partition types. e.g. Novell Netware (when the GPT has a protective MBR to boot into that OS) - whether the GPT partition type actually matters or not. So, is there any other disadvantages of the GPT itself? e.g. minimum partition size would be larger than MBR's. Or, the partition alignment of GPT would be larger than MBR. etc. The parameters used in the GPT, must be sized for the job. GUIDs are 128 bits, in an attempt to avoid collisions (just like all the other GUIDs the system uses, like CLSIDs). LBAs need to be 64-bits, so a decent sized disk (in sectors) can be defined. As far as I know, alignment is on 1MB boundaries, just like the Vista (or later) alignment of MBR partitions. I don't really have any good tools for GPT. So I hope something doesn't break. A "good" tool to me, is a tool that can state disk values in exact numbers of bytes. fsutil can give some info, but I really need something better than that. My GPT disks here, generally have only one partition. I would use a byte offset method to work with the partition, if all else failed. I would guess an NTFS header would be relatively close to the beginning of the disk, and searching for "NTFS" with a hex editor would find it. But I cannot say I have a strong workflow after that. I'm pretty well dead in the water if it breaks. I don't even know if TestDisk will scan for GPT. And the disks with GPT on them here, are big enough, I don't really want to work on them. It takes hours and hours to do the most trivial thing. You have to put a lot of effort into planning, to get anything done. This is a result of disk size expanding faster than I/O speed, so it takes more and more hours to do anything. Paul |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|