On Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:23:23 +0100, Michael wrote:

> > Oh, and if you use GPT, you no longer need the MBR compatibility
> > partition, or whatever its called. I no longer need it so I can't
> > remember the exact name.  
> 
> Man pages of partitioning tools refer to it as "Protective MBR",
> although I've seen it mentioned in the interwebs as "protective GPT",
> which I think is more accurate.  It uses the first sector (LBA 0) to
> store an MBR table showing the whole disk, or 2TB if smaller, as an MBR
> partition.  This is the first partition on the disk, typically 1 MiB in
> size.  It is meant to stop 20 year old partitioning tools from messing
> up a GPT partitioning scheme because they can't see it.  Arguably
> nobody uses Windows 98 these days, so it should be safe to not have a
> protective MBR on your GPT disks.

You need it if your hardware doesn't support EFI booting.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten per cent of its capacity
... the rest is overhead for the operating system.