The partitioning scheme for modern UEFI Drives or drives over 2TB. It improves on MBR by allowing for:
- Up to 128 partitions
- Support for drives larger than 2.2 TB
LBA Arrangement
Partitions are sectored based off LBA.
Protective MBR (LBA 0)
Protective MBR is serves to have backwards compatability with MBR. It is also commonly used to prevent MBR disk utility software from overwriting GPT disks accidentally.
GPT Header (LBA 1)
Includes a Pointer to the Partition Entry Array. A GPT Header backup exists in the final LBA aswell.
Partition Entry Array (LBA 2)
The list of partition entries on the drive.
The entries usually follow this format:
They are defined by a set partition size (commonly 128 bytes)