Can GPT Formatted External Drive Store Virtual MBR Formatted Partitions for Recovery?

Hi Everyone,

I just purchased a new internal 6 TB HDD, that I am using with a USB 3.0 to SATA External Hard Drive Docking Station (to convert to an "external drive").

Problem is until yesterday I didn't know that there were two different ways to format larger HDDs (GPT, which would allow me to utilize the entire 6 TB of the drive, but I am concerned might give me compatibility problems with backing up and potentially restoring MBR formatted-partitions on the internal HDD of my Windows 7 Pro PC) and the older MBR format, which I know will give me no compatibility issues with my PC internal HDD, but will apparently limit me to only using 2 TB of the external HDD, leaving the other 4 TVB (as I understand) "unusable".

My question is this: I am using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15 Professional to currently back up the MBR partitions of my PC internal HDD (running Windows 7 Professional x64) to "virtual drives" (containers).

If I do format my new external 6 TB HDD in GPT format, can I then use Paragon to backup the MBR partitions of my internal MBR HDD into "virtual drives" that are merely stored on the external GPT formatted HDD, and if I am able to do this, should I ever need to restore one of these stored virtual MBR HDDs back to the original PC internal HDD (or perhaps a brand new MBR formatted internal HDD of the same size as the previous internal MBR HDD that I would be replacing it with), will the restored MBR partitions work on the (new or current) MBR internal PC HDD without any problems (not limited to, but including being able to boot up into Windows 7 Professional x64?

Any help or advice on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Cfguy

Neither Windows 7 nor PHDM should have any problems with GPT.

Hi,

Thanks so much for replying to my post and confirming that neither Windows 7, nor PHDM would have a problem with a GPT-Formatted HDD.

But what about storing virtual backups of MBR-Formatted HDD Partitions on a GPT-Formatted Disk (for backup) and then possibly transferring those virtual partitions back to the same (or another) MBR-Formatted HDD for recovery?

Would this be a problem?

Thanks,
Cfguy

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fireworker

Neither Windows 7 nor PHDM should have any problems with GPT.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by CFguy

Would this be a problem?

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I don't understand your concern. The virtual backups is just files, and the external drive is just a storage.