Question on "Change all MBR disk type drives to EMBR"

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barrow
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Nov 07, 2013 10:55 pm

Question on "Change all MBR disk type drives to EMBR"

Post by barrow »

I am on the learning curve for BIBM yet, although I use this tool since 3-4 years.

With the exception of few negative cases (where I lost important installations, maybe due to my limited knowledge about the tool), my experience with BIBM is generally positive, at the end.

Now, after the last disaster with Win 10 installation on HD0 (which caused loosing an entire Linux, installed on HD1-its own partitions), I'd have a simple (maybe stupid) question :

What is the "real" difference, if any interesing ones there exist, between changing the MBR disk type to EMBR on the HD0 disk only, and changing it on all the disks ?

Or, by using other words, when it is recommended to change only on HD0 and when in all the HDs ?

I am here with this question because I guess this point was never asked/treated in this forum (following my search), neither is well detailed in the BIBM manual/user guide.

Thanks in advance for the help.
TeraByte Support(PP)
Posts: 1644
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:51 am

Re: Question on "Change all MBR disk type drives to EMBR"

Post by TeraByte Support(PP) »

It depends on how the system is configured. The drive with BIBM installed on it and the booting drive must be EMBR (usually HD0). Other drives can remain MBR if the features provided by EMBR are not needed. For example, if you're installing multiple Windows installations on HD0 and will be using HD1 and HD2 as normal data drives, you can leave them MBR. Same goes for if HD1 and/or HD2 have OS installations, but don't require the ability to remove partitions from the MBR or unlimited primaries.

You can always convert drives to EMBR later if you find you need it. Also, you generally don't want external drives converted to EMBR (which can happen if you convert all drives).

What I usually do is just convert HD0 and then any other drives are converted to EMBR when/if needed later.
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