MBR is an old HDD partition also known as Master Boot Record. MBR has been in use since 1980. It used to be the only partition type in older windows versions but in MBR has a big limitation. It can create partitions only up to 2TB. A lot of people currently own HDDs with much higher capacity. So there is a new partition system that currently resolves this HDD capacity limitations. GPT or also known as GUID Partition Table. GPT theoretically allows unlimited partitions.
Current version of windows 8.1 allows up to 256TB, which should be enough for the users. Generally the modern motherboards have BIOS with the UEFI feature that allows the user to change partition type from MBR to GPT and vice versa.
Manually change your partition in windows 8.1
If you want to change your partition type manually in windows 8.1, here are the steps:
- First go to start menu of your windows
- Search for “Disk Management” and click on the result that says “Create and change Hard disk partitions”
- There will be HDDs titled as Disk 0 and onwards. Example., If you have only one hard disk drive it will only show Disk 0.
- Right click on the HDD you want to convert and click on “convert to GPT”
- Done
Using commands while installing windows
This can also be done using Command prompt while installing windows. Here are the list of commands that you have to do:
- As soon as the windows install screen boots up press Shift+F10
- Open the disk part tool type in “diskpart”
- To see the list of HDDs type in “list disk”
- To select a drive and format type in
select disk <disk number>
clean
convert gpt
exit
Now you can close the command prompt window and continue with your windows installation.
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