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10 January 2018  Jennifer Thatcher  Technology Manager of Test Dept.
 

Summary
Some computer users confuse on the boot model of their computer and are not so clear about the advantages and disadvantages of UEFI + GPT and BIOS + MBR. Follow us to get more about them!



Although UEFI and GPT has released for a long time, not everyone is familiar with them especially for UEFI. Most Windows computer selling now are using UEFI + GPT. “What is it and how to deal with it once the system corrupted?” has become a common question for most MBR+BIOS users. When we met such situation, part of computer users will restore system and turn off UEFI, even turn GPT disk to MBR one, which will totally ruin the advantages of UEFI+GPT. Now we are going to compare the two combinations: UEFI + GPT and MBR+BIOS, which can help you make a better decision between two combinations.

With UEFI + GPT Combination, you can:

Boot your computer with shorter time
UEFI + GPT will skip the detection of external device. And if you use SSD to be system disk, the boot time of your PC will be reduced sharply.

Support Secure Boot
Protect your computer from Bootkit attack, which can improve the security of your computer.

Safer
Boot data and structured information will be copied and save in different place in UEFI + GPT mode. Even one got corrupted, others can work immediately.

Support Larger Disk and partitions
Windows allows up to 128 partitions on a GPT-based drive.

With MBR + BIOS Combination, you can:

  • Not support disk up to 2TB
  • Need longer time to boot the computer (Comparing with UEFI + GPT).

Compatibility

After knowing the advantages of UEFI + GPT, you may want to use this combination. However, not all Windows system support this combination.
  • Windows XP x64 version can only use GPT disk for saving/reading data.
  • All versions of Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 Server, Windows Server 2008 (R2), Windows Server 2012 (R2), and Windows Server 2016 can use GPT disk partition for data. But booting is only supported for 64-bit editions on UEFI-based systems.