The Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) Partition Table is a standard for the layout of partition tables of a physical computer storage device, such as a hard disk drive or solid-state drive. It is part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard.
It has several advantages over master boot record (MBR) partition tables, such as support for more than four primary partitions and 64-bit rather than 32-bit logical block addresses (LBA) for blocks on a storage device. The larger LBA size supports larger disks.
Some BIOSes support GPT partition tables as well as MBR partition tables, in order to support larger disks than MBR partition tables can support.
GPT uses universally unique identifiers (UUIDs), which are also known as globally unique identifiers (GUIDs), to identify partitions and partition types.
All modern personal computer operating systems support GPT. Some, including macOS and Microsoft Windows on the x86 architecture, support booting from GPT partitions only on systems with EFI firmware, but FreeBSD and most Linux distributions can boot from GPT partitions on systems with either the BIOS or the EFI firmware interface.
History
The Master Boot Record (MBR) partitioning scheme, widely used since the early 1980s, had limitations when it came to modern hardware. The available size for block addresses and related information is limited to 32 bits. For hard disks with 512byte sectors, the MBR partition table entries allow a maximum size of 2 TiB (232 × 512bytes) or 2.20 TB (2.20 × 1012 bytes).
In the late 1990s, Intel developed a new partition table format as part of what eventually became the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). The GUID Partition Table is specified in chapter 5 of the UEFI 2.11 specification. GPT uses 64 bits for logical block addresses, allowing a maximum disk size of 264 sectors. For disks with 512byte sectors, the maximum size is 8 ZiB (264 × 512bytes) or 9.44 ZB (9.44 × 1021 bytes). For disks with 4,096byte sectors the maximum size is 64 ZiB (264 × 4,096bytes) or 75.6 ZB (75.6 × 1021 bytes).
In 2010, hard-disk manufacturers introduced drives with 4,096byte sectors (Advanced Format). For compatibility with legacy hardware and software, those drives include an emulation technology (512e) that presents 512byte sectors to the entity accessing the hard drive, despite their underlying 4,096byte physical sectors. Performance could be degraded on write operations, when the drive is forced to perform two read-modify-write operations to satisfy a single misaligned 4,096byte write operation. Since April 2014, enterprise-class drives without emulation technology (4K native) have been available on the market.
Readiness of the support for 4 KB logical sectors within operating systems differs among their types, vendors and versions. For example, Microsoft Windows supports 4K native drives since Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 (both released in 2012) in UEFI.
Features
Like MBR, GPT uses logical block addressing (LBA) in place of the historical cylinder-head-sector (CHS) addressing. The protective MBR is stored at LBA 0, and the GPT header is in LBA 1. The GPT header has a pointer to the partition table (Partition Entry Array), which is typically at LBA 2. Each entry in the partition table has the same size, which is 128 or 256 or 512, etc., bytes; typically this size is 128 bytes. The UEFI specification stipulates that a minimum of 16,384 bytes, regardless of sector size, are allocated for the Partition Entry Array. Thus, on a disk with 512-byte sectors, at least 32 sectors are used for the Partition Entry Array, and the first usable block is at LBA 34 or higher, while on a 4,096-byte sector disk, at least 4 sectors are used for the Partition Entry Array, and the first usable block is at LBA 6 or higher. In addition to the primary GPT header and Partition Entry Array, stored at the beginning of the disk, there is a backup GPT header and Partition Entry Array, stored at the end of the disk. The backup GPT header must be at the last block on the disk (LBA -1) and the backup Partition Entry Array is placed between the end of the last partition and the last block.
MBR variants
Protective MBR (LBA 0) For limited backward compatibility, the space of the legacy Master Boot Record (MBR) is still reserved in the GPT specification, but it is now used in a way that prevents MBR-based disk utilities from misrecognizing and possibly overwriting GPT disks. This is referred to as a protective MBR.
A single partition of type EEh, encompassing the entire GPT drive (where "entire" actually means as much of the drive as can be represented in an MBR), is indicated and identifies it as GPT. Operating systems and tools which cannot read GPT disks will generally recognize the disk as containing one partition of unknown type and no empty space, and will typically refuse to modify the disk unless the user explicitly requests and confirms the deletion of this partition. This minimizes accidental erasures. Furthermore, GPT-aware OSes may check the protective MBR and if the enclosed partition type is not of type or if there are multiple partitions defined on the target device, the OS may refuse to manipulate the partition table.
If the actual size of the disk exceeds the maximum partition size representable using the legacy 32-bit LBA entries in the MBR partition table, the recorded size of this partition is clipped at the maximum, thereby ignoring the rest of the disk. This amounts to a maximum reported size of 2 TiB, assuming a disk with 512 bytes per sector (see 512e). It would result in 16 TiB with 4 KiB sectors (4Kn), but since many older operating systems and tools are hard coded for a sector size of 512 bytes or are limited to 32-bit calculations, exceeding the 2 TiB limit could cause compatibility problems.
Hybrid MBR (LBA 0 + GPT) In operating systems that support GPT-based boot through BIOS services rather than EFI, the first sector may also still be used to store the first stage of the bootloader code, but modified to recognize GPT partitions. The bootloader in the MBR must not assume a sector size of 512 bytes.
Partition table header (LBA 1)
+ GPT header format Offset Length Contents 0 (0x00) 8 bytes Signature ("EFI PART", or on little-endian machines) 8 (0x08) 4 bytes Revision number of header - 1.0 () for UEFI 2.10 12 (0x0C) 4 bytes Header size in little endian (in bytes, usually or 92 bytes) 16 (0x10) 4 bytes CRC-32 of header (offset +0 to +0x5B) in little endian, with this field zeroed during calculation 20 (0x14) 4 bytes Reserved; must be zero 24 (0x18) 8 bytes Current LBA (location of this header copy) 32 (0x20) 8 bytes Backup LBA (location of the other header copy) 40 (0x28) 8 bytes First usable LBA for partitions (primary partition table last LBA + 1) 48 (0x30) 8 bytes Last usable LBA for partitions (secondary partition table first LBA − 1) 56 (0x38) 16 bytes Disk GUID in little endian 72 (0x48) 8 bytes Starting LBA of array of partition entries (usually 2 for compatibility) 80 (0x50) 4 bytes Number of partition entries in array 84 (0x54) 4 bytes Size of a single partition entry (usually or 128) 88 (0x58) 4 bytes CRC-32 of partition entries array in little endian 92 (0x5C) * Reserved; must be zeroes for the rest of the block (420 bytes for a sector size of 512 bytes; but can be more with larger sector sizes)
The partition table header defines the usable blocks on the disk. It also defines the number and size of the partition entries that make up the partition table (offsets 80 and 84 in the table).
Partition entries (LBA 2–33)
+ GUID partition entry format Offset Length Contents 0 (0x00) 16 bytes Partition type GUID (little endian) 16 (0x10) 16 bytes Unique partition GUID (little endian) 32 (0x20) 8 bytes First LBA (little endian) 40 (0x28) 8 bytes Last LBA (inclusive, usually odd) 48 (0x30) 8 bytes Attribute flags (e.g. bit 60 denotes read-only) 56 (0x38) 72 bytes Partition name (36 UTF-16LE code units)
After the primary header and before the backup header, the Partition Entry Array describes partitions, using a minimum size of 128 bytes for each entry block.The GPT header contains a field that specifies the size of a partition table entry. The minimum required is 128 bytes, but implementations must allow for other values. See The starting location of the array on disk, and the size of each entry, are given in the GPT header. The first 16 bytes of each entry designate the partition type's globally unique identifier (GUID). For example, the GUID for an EFI system partition is . The second 16 bytes are a GUID unique to the partition. Then follow the starting and ending 64 bit LBAs, partition attributes, and the 36 character (max.) Unicode partition name. As is the nature and purpose of GUIDs and as per RFC 4122, no central registry is needed to ensure the uniqueness of the GUID partition type designators.
The 64-bit partition table attributes are shared between 48-bit common attributes for all partition types, and 16-bit type-specific attributes:
+ Partition attributes Bit Content 0 Platform required (required by the computer to function properly, OEM partition for example, disk partitioning utilities must preserve the partition as is) 1 EFI firmware should ignore the content of the partition and not try to read from it 2 Legacy BIOS bootable (equivalent to active flag (typically bit 7 set) at offset in partition entries of the MBR partition table) 3–47 Reserved for future use 48–63 Defined and used by the individual partition type
Microsoft defines the type-specific attributes for basic data partition as:
+ Basic data partition attributes Bit Content 60 Read-only 61 Shadow copy (of another partition) 62 Hidden 63 No drive letter (i.e. do not automount)
Google defines the type-specific attributes for ChromeOS kernel as:
+ ChromeOS kernel partition attributes Bit Content 56 Successful boot flag 55–52 Tries remaining 51–48 Priority (15: highest, 1: lowest, 0: not bootable)
Operating-system support
UNIX and Unix-like systems + Details of GPT support on UNIX and Unix-like operating systems OS family Version or edition Platform Read and write support Boot support Note FreeBSD Since 7.0 IA-32, x86-64, ARM In a hybrid configuration, both GPT and MBR partition identifiers may be used. Linux Most of the x86 Linux distributionsFedora 8+ and Ubuntu 8.04+ IA-32, x86-64, ARM Tools such as gdisk, GNU Parted, util-linux v2.23+ fdisk, SYSLINUX, GRUB 0.96 + patches and GRUB 2 have been GPT-enabled. Limited to 256 partitions per disk. macOS Since 10.4.0 (some features since 10.4.6) IA-32, x86-64, PowerPC, Apple silicon Only Intel and Apple silicon Macs can boot from GPT. MidnightBSD Since 0.4-CURRENT IA-32, x86-64 In a hybrid configuration, both GPT and MBR partition identifiers may be used. NetBSD Since 6.0. IA-32,. x86-64,. ARM OpenBSD Since 5.9 IA-32, x86-64, ARM . Solaris Since Solaris 10 IA-32, x86-64, SPARC HP-UX Since HP-UX 11.20 IA-64
Windows: 32-bit versions Windows 7 and earlier do not support UEFI on 32-bit platforms, and therefore do not allow booting from GPT partitions.