A partition is a contiguous space of storage on a physical or logical disk that functions as if it were a physically separate disk. Partitions are visible to the system firmware and the installed operating systems. Access to a partition is controlled by the system firmware before the system boots the operating system, and then by the operating system after it is started.

GPT disks can grow to a very large size. The number of partitions on a GPT disk is not constrained by temporary schemes such as container partitions as defined by the MBR Extended Boot Record (EBR).

The GPT disk partition format is well defined and fully self-identifying. Data critical to platform operation is located in partitions and not in unpartitioned or "hidden" sectors. GPT disks use primary and backup partition tables for redundancy and CRC32 fields for improved partition data structure integrity. The GPT partition format uses version number and size fields for future expansion. Each GPT partition has a unique identification GUID and a partition content type, so no coordination is necessary to prevent partition identifier collision. Each GPT partition has a 36-character Unicode name. This means that any software can present a human-readable name for the partition without any additional understanding of the partition.

GPT disk

The protective MBR area exists on a GPT partition table for backward compatibility with disk management utilities that operate on MBR. The GPT header defines the range of logical block addresses that are usable by partition entries. The GPT header also defines its location on the disk, its GUID, and a 32-bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC32) checksum that is used to verify the integrity of the GPT header. Each entry in the GUID partition table begins with a partition type GUID. The 16-byte partition type GUID, which is similar to a System ID in the partition table of an MBR disk, identifies the type of data that the partition contains and identifies how the partition is used, for example, whether it is a basic disk or a dynamic disk. Note that each GUID partition entry has a backup copy.

Solution to recover data from GPT disk

EaseUS data recovery software, compatible with all Windows operating system, can recover lost files due to deletion, format, raw partition, virus attack, system crash etc. from GPT disk.

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EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is the best data recovery software to solve all data loss problems - recover lost files from hard drive, external hard drive, USB drive, Memory card, digital camera, mobile phone, music player and other storage media due to deleting, formatting, software crash, hard drive damage, virus attacking, partition loss or other unknown reasons. Only three steps and a few clicks to get whatever you lost back!

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GPT Disk Backup Software

If your data on the GPT drive has been overwritten by new content, then the chance to recover them will be little. For better data security of the GPT disk, EaseUS offer you backup software - EaseUS Todo Backup. It provides system backup and restore, hard disk or partition backup & restore, disk clone to protect your system and disk. It can back up the whole PC, including the operating system plus your data, applications, settings, and everything.

GPT Disk Partition Management Software

If the partitions on your GPT disk cannot satisfy the needs, say, the system partition runs out of place due to system updates or any other reasons, your system will run slow and the performance of the computer will be degraded. EaseUS Partition Master is a good choice to solve this problem.

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Updated by Cedric

Cedric Grantham is a senior editor and data recovery specialist of EaseUS. He mainly writes articles and how-to tips about data recovery on PC and Mac. He has handled 10,000+ data recovery cases and is good at data recovery of NTFS, FAT (FAT32 and ExFAT) file systems, and RAID structure reorganization.

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Approved by Evan Galasso

Evan Galasso is a digital forensics and data recovery engineer with over 10 years of experience in the field. He presents opinions on the current state of storage media, reverse engineering of storage systems and firmware, and electro-mechanical systems of SSDs and HDDs.

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