For an MBR partition, what is the maximum disk size a partition can be?

Prepare for the Red Hat Certified Systems Admin Exam EX200. Enhance your skills with interactive quizzes, flashcards, and detailed explanations. Ace your certification exam today!

Multiple Choice

For an MBR partition, what is the maximum disk size a partition can be?

Explanation:
MBR partitions are limited by a 32-bit field that stores the partition size in sectors. That means the maximum number of sectors a partition can have is 2^32. If the disk uses the common 512-byte sectors, the largest possible partition size is 2^32 × 512 bytes, which is about 2 TiB. So you’ll typically see the practical limit described as roughly 2 TiB for an MBR-partitioned disk. If your sector size were different (for example, 4 KiB), the math changes accordingly (2^32 × 4096 equals about 16 TiB), but the underlying constraint is the 32-bit LBA addressing. For disks larger than this, GPT is used because it supports vastly larger addresses.

MBR partitions are limited by a 32-bit field that stores the partition size in sectors. That means the maximum number of sectors a partition can have is 2^32. If the disk uses the common 512-byte sectors, the largest possible partition size is 2^32 × 512 bytes, which is about 2 TiB. So you’ll typically see the practical limit described as roughly 2 TiB for an MBR-partitioned disk. If your sector size were different (for example, 4 KiB), the math changes accordingly (2^32 × 4096 equals about 16 TiB), but the underlying constraint is the 32-bit LBA addressing. For disks larger than this, GPT is used because it supports vastly larger addresses.

Subscribe

Get the latest from Passetra

You can unsubscribe at any time. Read our privacy policy