Is my bootable backup drive suposed to be MBR or GPT?

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rastus
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Is my bootable backup drive suposed to be MBR or GPT?

Post by rastus » Mon May 27, 2024 8:35 pm

Maybe this is a dumb question, but I don't fully understand how or when going from one type to the other is problematic.

I have an external USB drive that I'm using for backup. (WD My Passport HDD - not SSD). Using R-Drive Image's 'create startup disks' I made my backup drive bootable. While doing my regular backup today, I suddenly noticed that it's an MBR boot drive, while all the drives that I'm backing up are GPT.

Will this cause a problem upon restoring an image? Seems like I read somewhere that it's not good.

Alt
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Re: Is my bootable backup drive suposed to be MBR or GPT?

Post by Alt » Tue May 28, 2024 9:21 am

Windows is normally configured to boot from an MBR drive. But there are some ways to use GPT bootable drives (Installing and booting windows 10 on a GPT partition, for example). You'll be able successfully restore your bootable GPT drives if they are configured accordingly.

If you worry about how your MBR startup disk will restore GPT disks, I've good news for you: it doesn't matter which partition scheme is used for the startup disk.

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