When you open Disk Management there is no immediate clue to this fact and no obvious difference between the two styles of hard drives. In our example below we have more than one drive and only the second drive is GPT. The Disk Management utility in new generation Windows can be used to show us the partition style a hard drive has been configured with. View the hard drive in Windows Disk Management. On Windows machines if you only have one hard drive and it is GPT then you almost certainly have a UEFI capable motherboard to allow you to boot from that drive. The new UEFI ( Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) replaces the old BIOS firmware which is only capable of booting an MBR styled hard drive. The new GPT way of partitioning a hard drive was designed in tandem with a new type of BIOS on the PC motherboard, so with store-bought machines the chances are that if you have one you also have the other. For an introduction to partition style and a couple of other factors it is crucial to be aware of we suggest you have a look at our page. Many of the current utilities and apps that have been around for years will be unsafe to use so it really is important that we determine how a hard drive has been styled before attempting any work or modifications to its underlying setup. The new GUID Partition Table (GPT) that is set to take over from the classic MBR (or msdos) partition table will literally re-write the rule book on how to configure and manage a dual or multiboot computer.

How to determine gpt or mbr