Would I have to format all of my HDDs if I move from MBR to GPT?

[marthkoopa]

I'm going to be getting a new mobo with UEFI, and am interested in using GPT over MBR because I heard boot times on GPT are slightly faster(if that's even true), but I have a few questions...

The most important one is, will I lose any data on secondary drives (I will be formatting my main drive, an SSD, when reinstalling windows 7 anyway) if they need to be formatted to support GPT? Or can I just keep them as-is and Windows will find the drives just fine and I only need to set the main drive to GPT?

And do I need a certain type of HDD/SSD that supports GPT? Or do all drives work with it?

I've tried researching myself but I can't find any answers to these two questions.

 

[canadian69]

GPT is for drives or arrays over 2.2GB. There are tons of posts regarding SSD's and GPT here on TH.

http://www.tomshardware.com/s/forum/gpt/

 

[marthkoopa]

So GPT will not work on drivers lower than 2.2TB?

How will I be able to install windows if my UEFI board requires a GPT drive to boot from, and I don't have any drives over 2.2TB to support it?

I've looked everywhere, including here, but I can't find anyone with these same questions.

 

[JustSomeJoe]

GPT can be used on any size (or type) of drive (including a USB FLASH drive, if you want to). Any boot speed increase will be more to do with UEFI than GPT, UEFI boots using all processors/cores, MBR (initially) boots with only one processor/core. To the best of my knowledge you can't (currently) convert from MBR to GPT without losing data, this may change when more GPT tools become available.

 

[Pinhedd]

Sadly to convert an MBR disk to a GPT disk all partitions have to be completely destroyed which means that all data on the drive will be lost